intertitle |genre Situation comedy |creator Graham Linehan |developer |presenter |starring Chris O'Dowd lt;/br>Richard Ayoade lt;/br>Katherine Parkinson lt;/br>Matt Berry lt;/br> |voices |narrated |theme_music_composer Neil Hannon |opentheme |endtheme |composer |country United Kingdom |language English |num_series 4 |num_episodes 24 |list_episodes List of The IT Crowd episodes |executive_producer |producer TalkbackThames |asst_producer |editor Paul Machliss |location |camera Multi-camera |runtime 25 minutes |network Channel 4 |picture_format 16:9 |audio_format Stereo |first_run |first_aired |last_aired present |preceded_by |followed_by |related |website http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/I/itcrowd/ |production_website http://www.talkbackthames.tv/index.php?sprogrammes&b14&bc24&abc47 }} The IT Crowd is a [[British Academy Television Awards|BAFTA]] and [[International Emmy|Emmy]] award-winning [[British sitcom]] by [[Channel 4]], written by [[Graham Linehan]], produced by [[Ash Atalla]] and starring [[Richard Ayoade]], [[Chris ODowd]] and [[Katherine Parkinson]]. Set in the London offices of the fictional corporation Reynholm Industries, the show revolves around the three staff members of its IT ([[information technology]]) department, comprising two geeky technicians, a genius named Moss (Ayoade) and the workshy Roy (ODowd), headed by Jen (Parkinson), the department relationship manager who knows nothing about IT. The comedy premiered on Channel 4 on 3 February 2006, and has run for four series of 6 episodes each. A fifth and sixth series have been commissioned. The show was the third successful sitcom creation of Graham Linehan following [[Black Books]] co-written with Dylan Moran and [[Father Ted]] co-written with Arthur Mathews (writer)

Title

The IT in the shows title can be pronounced as either as in "the it crowd", or as as in I.T. department.

Plot

The IT Crowdis set in the offices of Reynholm Industries, a fictional British corporation in central London. It focuses on the shenanigans of the three-strong Information technology support team located in a dingy, untidy and unkempt basement – a great contrast to the shining modern architecture and stunning London views enjoyed by the rest of the organisation. The obscurity surrounding what the company does serves as a running gag throughout the series – all that is known is that the company bought and sold ITV (a fact which Denholm Reynholm forgot completely), and once made part-year profits of "eighteen hundred billion billion". The team consists of what Douglas Reynholm describes as "a dynamic go-getter (Jen), a genius (Moss) and a man from Ireland (Roy)". Moss and Roy, the two technicians, are portrayed as socially inept geek or, in Denholm Reynholms words, "standard nerds". Despite the companys dependence on their services, they are despised, ignored, and considered losers by the rest of the staff. Roys exasperation is reflected in his support techniques of ignoring the phone in the hope it will stop ringing, and using reel-to-reel tape recordings of stock IT suggestions ("Power cycling and "Is it definitely plugged in?"). He expresses his "personality" by wearing a different geek T-shirt in each episode. Mosss wide and intricate knowledge of all things technical is reflected in his extremely accurate yet utterly indecipherable suggestions, while he demonstrates a complete inability to deal with practical problems like extinguishing fires and removing spiders. Jen, the newest member of the team, is hopelessly non-technical, despite claiming on her curriculum vitae that she has "a lot of experience with computers". As Denholm, the company boss, is equally tech-illiterate, he is convinced by Jens interview bluffing and appoints her head of the IT department. Her official title is "relationship manager", yet her attempts at bridging the gulf between the technicians and the business generally have the opposite effect, landing Jen in situations just as ludicrous as those of her teammates.

Cast and characters

File:The IT Crowd.jpg * Chris O'Dowd as List of The IT Crowd characters#Roy Trenneman – a laid-back IT technician from Ireland, Roy is often shown to go to great lengths to fob off workmates so he can sit around doing nothing. However, when something does happen, hes always the one who gets the wrong end of the stick and is constantly either injured or in distress. He and his co-worker Moss are described as "standard nerds"by Denholm Reynholm. * Richard Ayoade as List of The IT Crowd characters#Maurice Moss – highly intelligent with lack of social skills, Moss is a "standard nerd"who struggles to communicate with anything that doesnt have a keyboard. Moss lives at home with his mother, who also dresses him and packs him lunch. In the episode The haunting of Bill Crouse, he claims that Jen is dead and in the following episode (Aunt Irma Visits), he pays a visit to a psychiatrist (who looks exactly like Roys mother), who has an affair with him. * Katherine Parkinson as List of The IT Crowd characters#Jen Barber – after claiming she has had "a lot of experience with computers" Jen is made head of Reynholm Industries IT department, where she is soon proven by Roy and Moss to in fact have no knowledge of IT at all. However, she finds her niche by working as the Relationship Managerbetween IT and the rest of Reynholm Industries. * Chris Morris (satirist) as List of The IT Crowd characters#Denholm Reynholm (series 1 & 2 recurring, series 3 From Hell) – the founder of Reynholm industries, Denholm has very little understanding of IT. In series 2 Denholm is informed by the police of a problem with the companys pension accounts, leading him to commit suicide by walking out a high storey window. He appears once in series 3 when Douglas sees him briefly in the afterlife. * Matt Berry as List of The IT Crowd characters#Douglas Reynholm (series 2 recurring, 3 & 4 main cast) – the son of Denholm "that fled from a hefty lawsuit to go off womanising all over the world"using his fathers cash, Douglas inherits Reynholm Industries. At the end of series 4, he is taking into court by his apparently dead wife, Victoria. There is quite an argument, but in the end she sued him for a large amount of money. * Noel Fielding as List of The IT Crowd characters#Richmond Avenal (series 1 & 2 recurring, series 4 one episode) – once a young go-getter at Reynholm Industries, Richmond was the right-hand-man to Denholm, before finding Cradle of Filth and becoming a Goth subculture - leading to his downfall as a successful businessman. As a result he ends up confined to the server room in the basement, next to the IT department. Richmond didnt appear in Series 3 due to Noel Fieldings busy schedule. Richmond was said by Moss to have scurvy In the fourth series final episode, Richmond features once more in a cameo appearance, where it is revealed that after he caught Scurvy he decided that he didnt want to be a goth after all, and instead began running a successful business called "Goth2Boss" to encourage goths to cheer up and make good use of their lives.

Cultural references

Image:The IT Crowd DVD.jpg such as [[Knight Lore]]and [[Head Over Heels (video game)|Head Over Heels]]]] The show tries to add a large number of references to geek culture and professionalism, mostly in set dressing and props. Dialogue (both technical and cultural) is usually authentic and any technobabble used often contains in-jokes for viewers knowledgeable in such subjects. On occasion, there will be movie-style scenes that parody fight scenes and melodrama. In August 2008, having not had time to source the props himself, Linehan appealed to fans to donate items to use for series 3, to make the set look like "a geeks Shangri-La . The Centre for Computing History lent a collection of computers from the 1970s and 1980s. They included an Altair 8800 Tangerine Computer Systems#Oric Atmos Amstrad CPC 464 ZX81 ZX Spectrum#ZX Spectrum +2 Commodore 64 Commodore PET Atari ST Sord M5 Risc PC BBC Model B an Astro Wars game, circuit boards from a Wang Laboratories#The Wang VS computer line mainframe and several shelves of old computer manuals. One manual with the letters MOSS on the spine sits on the shelf behind Moss. Many items on the set reflect Linehans own personal taste. There are numerous examples of this, but most noticeable are the V for Vendetta (Guy Fawkes) mask, the Fair Use Has A Posse bumpersticker, the Flying Spaghetti Monster the Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices posters (Guided by Voices is one of Linehans favourite bands, cropping up in background music, on t-shirts and getting a specific mention in series 3, episode 3), and the War on Terror (game) which is played by Moss and Roy in series 2, episode 4. The main stickers found around the office include Electronic Frontier Foundation ("Fair Use has a POSSE", "MP3 is not a crime", "Coding is not a crime"http://w2.eff.org/campaigns/stickers/) and Open Rights Group

Production

Linehan wrote the first four series alone, but has said he intends to use a team of writers for the fifth series, including friends and colleagues Charlie Bergmann and Ali Carruthers, who co-wrote Im Alan Partridge alongside Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci The show is filmed before a live studio audience, which at the time was considered by some as risky, with the format thought to have been surpassed by more fly-on-the-wall type presentations. This was a deliberate choice by Linehan, who sought to challenge the current vogue for hailing the "death of the sitcom", stating "I trust my instincts, so Im going to do it my way and hope people come to me". The first series was recorded in front of a live audience at Teddington Studios but moved to Pinewood Studios for series 2 onwards, with some additional location footage.

Episodes

All four series have run for 6 episodes each. The first series premiered on 3 February 2006, the second on 24 August 2007, the third on 21 November 2008 and the fourth on 25 June 2010. Plans for filming of a Christmas special in Summer 2009 before the fourth series, mentioned in a May 2009 interview of Chris ODowd (Roy), did not ultimately come to fruition. In a first for Channel 4, each episode of the first series was available for download via the stations web site for the seven days preceding its initial TV broadcast. Downloads were only available for UK and Ireland viewers and were supplied in Windows Media Video format. All but the first two episodes were encoded with Digital Rights Management restrictions. The opening episode of series 4 was released via Channel 4s online service 4oD a week before the television broadcast, though in order to protect the programme this was only available to registered and logged-in viewers, whereas much of 4oDs post-broadcast output is freely available.

Distribution

International syndication

The show is broadcast internationally. In Australia series 1 and 2 were broadcast on Australian Broadcasting Corporation with syndication on ABC2 as well as being aired on UKTV (Australia and New Zealand) In Europe, GTV (Bulgaria) began airing the show in Bulgaria in July 2008, while Comedy Central Germany started airing the first season in September 2009. In the Czech Republic the show was broadcast on Česká televize and HBO TV 2 Zulu has aired the show in Denmark, while it has also been shown on Comedy Central in The Netherlands. In the United States, episodes have been shown on Independent Film Channel and the first 3 series are streamable on Netflix Canadian channel G4 Canada ran the show during their Adult Digital Distraction segment in July 2007. In Latin America is airing in Mexico since 2010 on Canal 11

DVD releases

;Series 1 The first series was released in the UK as "The IT Crowd - Version 1.0" on 13 November 2006 by 2 Entertain Video Ltd. The DVD start-up sequence and subsequent menus are designed to resemble a ZX Spectrum The DVD also included a short film written and directed by Linehan called [[Hello Friend]] his directorial debut, and a tongue in cheek behind-the-scenes documentary presented by Ken Korda, a film maker created and portrayed by Comedian Adam Buxton (of Adam and Joe . An American region release of the DVD was delayed due to a delay in the broadcast of the American adaptation. MPI Home Video released it on 31 March 2009. The American version does not contain the audio commentaries which are found on the British version. ;Series 2 "The IT Crowd - Version 2.0" DVD was released in the UK on 1 October 2007, together with a box set containing both the first and second series. Retail chain HMV sold an exclusive limited edition version featuring a set of four postcards in the style of popular viral photos such as lolcats — here replicated as Ceiling Goth Whereas the first series DVD menus parodied 8-bit games, the Series 2 DVD menus parody 16-bit games and make reference to Zero Wing (All your base are belong to us , Mortal Kombat, Tetris and Lemmings. There are also several hidden extras encoded into the subtitles. These are done in much the same way as the base64 subtitles from Series 1, and include three JPG images and a Z-machine Episode 4 has a BBC BASIC listing, and Episode 6 has light bars in the corner of the screen which can be decoded using a light reader lt;/ref>http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/what-if-we-ran-a-competition-and-no-one-came/ Blog entry by Graham Linehan about Easter Eggs] ;Series 3 A box-set containing all three series was released in the UK on 16 March 2009 under the 2ENTERTAIN label. A single DVD featuring all six episodes was also released on the 16th of March. As with both the series 1 and 2 DVDs, the menus are based on different games. In particular, such internet games as GROW CUBE, Doeo and flow.

Adaptations

American version

A USA version of The IT Crowdwas almost aired by NBC It starred Ayoade reprising his role as Moss, with Joel McHale as Roy, Jessica St. Clair as Jen and Rocky Carroll as Denholm. Filmed at Universal Media Studios and produced by FremantleMedia Linehan and Steve Tao acted as Executive Producers, with four writers involved - David Guarascio, Moses Port, Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. A pilot was filmed in January 2007, and a full series was ordered, advertised by NBC to be aired in the Autumn of 2007–08. According to a report in [[The Hollywood Reporter]]in September 2007 however, the show had not gone into production and was going to be cancelled, even though a couple of scripts were written, stating the series "didnt quite spark" with a new NBC chairman Ben Silverman The pilot itself has since appeared in YouTube amongst other sites. The pilot episode for the American version reflects the pilot from the original British version, except for a few minor changes in the script. On July 30, 2010, in an online live chat with [[The Guardian]] Linehan confirmed that a US version of the show is back on.

German version

A German version of the programme was in production starting June 2007, starring Sky du Mont Sebastian Münster, Stefan Puntigam and Britta Horn.lt;/ref> Originally titled Das iTeam - Die Jungs mit der Maus(The iTeam - The Boys with the Mouse where "Maus" is also a slang term for a young woman), the title was changed to Das iTeam - Die Jungs an der Maus(The iTeam - The Boys at the Mouse at the last minute. The premiere episode was aired on 4 January 2008 on Sat.1 After the first episode was broadcast online, the adaptation received a mainly negative response from Internet forum users and blog writers. It was criticised for the quality of its translation and direction, and the poor performance of Stefan Puntigam as Gabriel (German versions name for Moss). The show was dropped by Sat.1 in January 2008 after the second episode due to low ratings.http://www.quotenmeter.de/index.php?newsid24747 Quotenmeter.de - Schluss mit lustig: Sat.1 wirft «Das iTeam» raus]

Reception

Ratings

The premiere of the show on Channel 4 was watched by 1.8m viewers, described as "disappointing" by BBC News however, Linehan stated he was "playing the long game" and reflected how the first series of [[Father Ted]]also "went pretty unnoticed" but went on to gain viewers and awards. The most recent series finale on July 30th saw the show reach its current ratings peak of 2.17 million. It performed highly successfully in its time slot.

Awards and nominations

The show has won awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTAs), the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the International Emmys), the Rose d'Or television entertainment awards, and also from the fan voted Comedy.co.uk Awards organised by the British Comedy Guide Individual awards have also come in the British Comedy Awards and Irish Film and Television Awards In 2006, the series was voted Best New British Sitcom at the British Comedy Guide#The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2006 out of seventeen nominees. In 2007, the series was voted Comedy Of The Year at the British Comedy Guide#The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2007 out of over 100 nominees. Nominated in the British Academy Television Awards 2007 for Best Situation Comedy alongside [[Green Wing]]and [[Pulling (TV series)|Pulling]] it lost out to eventual winner [[The Royle Family]] In 2008 the series was awarded the List of International Emmy Award winners#Comedy and the Rose d'Or#2008 for Best Sitcom. Nominated in the British Academy Television Awards 2008 for Best Situation Comedy alongside [[Benidorm (TV series)|Benidorm]]and [[The Thick of It]] it lost out to eventual winner [[Peep Show (TV series)|Peep Show]] In 2009, the series won the Best Situation Comedy award at the British Academy Television Awards 2009 Also in 2009 Graham Linehan won best script television actor at the 6th Irish Film and Television Awards for the show, while Katherine Parkinson won the Best Comedy Actress award at the British Comedy Awards#2009

Notes

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References

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Further reading

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External links

* * http://www.talkbackthames.tv/index.php?sprogrammes&b14&bc24&abc47 The IT Crowd at Talkback Thames * * * * [[tviv:The IT Crowd|The IT Crowd]]episode guide at The TV IV * http://www.reynholm.co.uk/ Parody site for Reynholm Industries] (http://www.reynholm.co.uk/intranet/ Staff intranet] login: http://www.reynholm.co.uk/~moss/files/pw.store/]) * http://www.ifc.com/itcrowd/ The IT Crowd at IFC] * http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/3080/Computer-Museum-Helps-the-IT-Crowd/ Set Design for the IT Crowd Series 3] Category:2006 in British television Category:2006 television series debuts Category:2000s British television series Category:Channel 4 sitcoms Category:Computers in fiction ca:The IT Crowd cs:The IT Crowd de:The IT Crowd es:The IT Crowd fa:گروه آی تی (سریال) fr:The IT Crowd it:IT Crowd hu:Kockafejek nl:The IT Crowd ja:ハイっ、こちらIT課! uz:The IT Crowd pl:Technicy-magicy pt:The IT Crowd ru:Компьютерщики sk:Partička IT fi:IT-porukka uk:The IT Crowd zh:IT狂人