The Office has been off the air for more than a decade, but its influence on television is still easy to see. Created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the original 2001 UK version followed David Brent (Gervais) and the employees of a paper company called Wernham Hogg. It only ran for 14 episodes and two Christmas specials, but its approach to workplace comedy became extremely popular.

The US version of The Office followed in 2005 and eventually ran for nine seasons on NBC. While the British series established the basic idea of mockumentary storytelling, the American version gave it more time to develop, and the series led by Michael Scott (Steve Carell), the manager of the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, has become iconic (not to mention its theme tune!).

The Office made mundane things funny

The reaction was often more important than the joke

What made The Office unique is that its premise is built around mundane things. For instance, Michael could spend an entire episode worrying about an office party. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) would get into a trivial disagreement just for fun. Or corporate could throw a new office rule into the mix that would mess up everyone’s day.

That would normally be considered rather boring. But the secret to The Office’s success was that each character’s reaction mattered more than whatever exaggerated crisis they were thrown at. A person could explain what they think happened in a talking-head interview, only for the next scene to show something that contradicts their version of events.

The camera could also catch a reaction that the other characters don’t see, giving viewers information that exists outside the conversation – essentially breaking the fourth wall. Speaking to The Washington Post, Greg Daniels, who adapted the flagship show for American audiences, has explained that this was one of the things he liked most about the mockumentary approach to storytelling.

Instead of simply watching characters deliver jokes, viewers were encouraged to pay attention to their faces and work out what they were thinking or whether they even understood how they were coming across. This let writers skip explaining a character’s feelings through dialogue because the camera showed the reaction instead.

The mockumentary format went beyond The Office

Other sitcoms found new ways to use the same storytelling tool

Credit: ABC

Naturally, other sitcoms started using similar techniques. Released in 2009, Parks and Recreation followed Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and the employees of Pawnee, Indiana’s parks department. Season 1 had obvious similarities to The Office, but the show eventually focused more on the personal relationships among its characters and the town they worked in.

Modern Family took the mockumentary approach in a different direction. Although the series wasn’t set in a workplace, it used the format to chronicle the lives of Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill), his children, and their families. Characters talked directly to the camera about whatever was happening in their lives, while viewers were immediately shown why their version of events wasn’t as reliable as they thought.

Abbott Elementary brought the format back to a workplace when it premiered in 2021. The series follows Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson) and the teachers at a Philadelphia public school, with episodes built around problems that are specific to the school rather than a huge sitcom premise. Once again, the same scene means something different depending on whose perspective the audience follows.

That approach also allowed The Office to make anyone in the cast useful to a story. Michael Scott was technically the boss, but an episode could just as easily become a Jim and Dwight story. Modern Family took that flexibility into family, while Parks and Recreation and Abbott Elementary shifted attention between their casts without having to force every story through one main character.

Audiences eventually stopped asking why the cameras were there

The legacy of The Office lives on

The biggest sign of The Office‘s influence is that its formula no longer needs explaining. The mockumentary was once unusual enough to be the entire joke, but audiences have seen the format often enough that a new series can introduce it without justifying why a camera crew is following its characters around.

That’s probably a bigger legacy than anyone could have imagined. The Paper is probably the best example of how that essence lives on. The series follows the same documentary crew from The Office, but this time they’re filming employees at the Toledo Truth-Teller. The newspaper is trying to survive as local journalism is struggling to stay relevant.

Editor-in-chief Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) is brought in to try to revive it. The survival-of-local-journalism angle suggests the documentary setup still has room to explore workplaces changing alongside the real world around them. Although the people being filmed are not the same, the reason to keep watching them hasn’t changed all that much.

More than two decades after the format first broke the fourth wall, television still hasn’t found a way (or a reason) to escape The Office.