8 Great TV Shows With Awful First Seasons

8. The Office

The Office is easily one of the most influential TV shows of the 21st century, just look at any meme library and you'll see proof enough of that. Endlessly quotable, grounded enough to be compelling, but absurd enough that it got away with a lot of jokes that other shows would otherwise have veered away from.

But the version of The Office that we're all aware of was actually an Americanized sister series to a BBC show of the same name. And when you learn that, a lot of season 1 starts to make more sense.

The BBC Office was a completely different animal from what the American NBC version would end up becoming. Being British, it was a lot darker, with a cynical, downright bleak view of people and the British workforce (no prizes for guessing that it starred Ricky Gervais). The American version initially tried to reflect that, and by season's end it was clear that it needed to go its own direction if it wanted to stick around longer.

So season 2 onward, it still took the piss out of its cast every chance it got, but it also softened them a lot more than the BBC version was willing to.