I’ll probably write a song about this

The Office goes musical with S1E4: ‘Training’

This piece is part of a series on The Office (UK), running up to the 20th anniversary of its finale this Christmas. Don’t miss out by following me on Medium.

Being at work while being unproductive; away from your desk but still wasting time; training without learning — if you wanted a synecdoche for office jobs that exposed their absurdity you could do worse than a training day.

The one in The Office is led by Rowan (Vincent Franklin in his breakout role, before he went on to play barefoot policy guru Stewart Pearson in The Thick of It.) He comes armed with teamwork exercises, “an MBA from Bradford” and that now obsolete contraption, the overhead projector. These aren’t enough to fend off David Brent.

David can’t pass up the opportunity of his staff seated in a ring like an audience and a whole day at work without the distraction of doing any. For him it’s not a training day, it’s a performing day.

As we read him do in the first part of this series, he spends episode 4 showing off his comedy geek stylings. A corporate video which Rowan admits “is a bit cheesy and a bit 80s” is for David a reference to spot: when Peter Purves gets confused for his Blue Peter co-host John Noakes, David squawks with…