20 Best British TV Comedy Characters Of All Time

Filmed in the style of a mockumentary and without a laughter track underneath, The Office was a new sub-genre of comedy. The lack of canned laughter amplified the awkward encounters within the show and ended up making some of the most memorable televisions scenes in history.

It’s Ricky Gervais’ performance as David Brent who is the core of all the awkwardness. The key element of his character which causes all of this is Brent’s overinflated sense of superiority. He believes he’s intelligent and cool, completely blind to his own social ineptness. This leads to giving bad advice, and unintentionally insulting his colleagues.

Brent also tries his hand at many different skills from poetry, composing music and a faltering career as a stand-up comedian. Most notably is his charity dance – in order to outdo his colleague Neil, he “fuses together Flashdance with MC Hammer” and performs the best/worst example of dad dancing ever.

You’ll probably watch a lot of the sitcom with curled toes due to David Brent’s horrendous embarrassments, but overall, it provided one of the freshest forms of modern humour ever. The Office was revolutionary because of its new brand of hilarity, spanning out international remakes and influencing American mockumentary sitcoms such as Modern Family and Parks and Recreation. And it is largely down to Ricky Gervais’ portrayal of David Brent and how to create hilarity out of a dull office setting.