The Office (U.S. TV series)

The Office is an American comedy television series broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). It is an adaptation of the previous BBC series of the same name. The Office was adapted for American audiences by Greg Daniels, a veteran writer for Saturday Night Live, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons. It is co-produced by Daniels’ Deedle-Dee Productions, and Shine America, in association with Universal Television. The original executive producers were Daniels, Howard Klein, Ben Silverman, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, with numerous others being promoted in later seasons.

The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. To simulate the look of an actual documentary, it is filmed in a single-camera setup, without a studio audience or a laugh track. The show debuted on NBC as a midseason replacement on March 24, 2005, and features Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, B. J. Novak and Ed Helms among the main cast. Series star Carell, who portrayed Michael Scott, left the series near the end of the seventh season. Since its debut, the show has aired 193 half-hour episodes and is currently airing its ninth season, which has been confirmed to be the series’ last. The series is scheduled to conclude with a one-hour finale on May 16, 2013.

The Office has received critical acclaim and has been included on several top TV series lists, and has also won several awards including four Primetime Emmy Awards, one of which for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2006. The series initially debuted to low ratings, but during its second season it became the highest-rated scripted series on NBC and was eventually chosen to follow Super Bowl XLIII. Off-network syndication of The Office began in late 2007, notably on TBS and Fox-owned stations in the United States.