Ricky Gervais Thinks ‘The Office’ Would ‘Suffer’ If Made Today Due To ‘Outrage Mobs’

The Office is an international franchise, with multiple adaptations across the globe, but the original series, the one that premiered on the BBC in 2001, is still arguably the best. (The American Office is obviously great, too, but at least the British Office didn’t have a David Brent/Michael Scott-less season nine.) If it debuted in 2020, however, the show’s creator Ricky Gervais doesn’t think it would be nearly as beloved due to “outrage mobs.”

In an interview with Times Radio on Friday, the five-time Golden Globes host said that contemporary audiences would take things too “literally.” Gervais continued, “There are these outrage mobs who take things out of context. This was a show about everything – it was about difference, it was about sex, race, all the things that people fear to even be discussed or talked about now, in case they say the wrong thing and they are canceled… People want to keep their jobs, so would worry about some of the subjects and jokes, even though [we] were laughing at this buffoon being uncomfortable around difference… Some people have lost their sense of irony and context.”

Is Gervais accurate Who knows. But at least he’s not giving terrible SNL advice.