The Trailer For An Australian Reboot Of "The Office" Dropped And It Appears To Be A Complete Rip-Off Of The American Version

I don't know what exactly I expected when I clicked play on that trailer. Obviously if they're making an Australian version of The Office, there's going to be plenty of similarities. But surely I was not expecting a shot-for-shot, one-for-one, DEI-inspired rip off of every character and every storyline that made the American version of The Office so great.  

The writers of Australian Office must be the laziest writers in the history of television. If you're making an Office reboot, you already have everything laid out for you. You have the general setting of a mid-sized office in a small, boring town where the characters hate their jobs. You have the way the entire show is shot documentary style. That's half the battle right there. But at least make the effort of taking a few liberties aside from making The Office slightly more racially diverse. I mean, Australian Jim & Pam are a total copy-paste from American Office. I guess they got a little crazy by making Michael and Dwight women. And they really went out on a limb by give girl Dwight the title of "Productivity Manager", instead of "Assistant to The Regional Manager." But the actresses' portrayals of a regional manager and her overzealous sidekick seem nearly identical to Steve Carrell & Rainn Wilson's. From their mannerisms, to the inflections in their voices. They must have spent a year studying Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute to get their female versions down to a tee.

Maybe I'm being a harsh. Maybe this is what everyone expected when they heard Australia was doing a reboot of The Office. I just figured it would have some originality. Something that made it stick out from the American version. But clearly that's not what Australia is going for. That trailer has the vibe of an off-Broadway play, where their whole goal is to make it as close as humanly possible to the real thing.

I imagine this show might do great with Australian's who have never heard of The Office in the first place. Considering The Office was a smash hit, if Australia just rolls out the exact same thing, then why wouldn't it be a success? And to be fair to Australia, they've piqued my interest. I'm going to have to check it out myself. I need to see how much of a rip-off this truly is. Perhaps it's not as bad as I think. Maybe black curly-haired Toby has layers to his character. Maybe Asian Meredith is a god damn star. Maybe the company portrayed in Australian Office takes on a whole new trajectory than the Scranton, PA branch of The Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company did.