Hotstar Dropped A Trailer For The Desi Remake Of 'The Office' & Twitter Had A Meltdown

Adapting The Office was always going to be a tall order. But by simply looking at the trailer it's apparent that the makers rushed into production.

No… no… no. No. NO. Most fans of The Office probably imagined Michael Scott’s face, as they clicked on the Hotstar link of the official ‘Indian adaptation’ of The Office. Originally created by Ricky Gervais for BBC, the show set around an eccentric boss called David Brent (played by Gervais). The show became so popular that it spun a reported nine remakes. The one that captured the mainstream consciousness was the American version, with Steve Carrell playing the central character of the eccentric boss called Michael Scott. The Indian adaptation will be the 10th official remake, and it mines the boss’ eccentricity out of… his Punjabiness. Of course.

One of the most loved shows on the planet that pretty much jumpstarted the mockumentary sitcom genre, The Office has a a loyal following even in India. Adapting it was always going to be a tall order. But by simply looking at the trailer it’s apparent that the makers rushed into production and went for the lowest-hanging fruits in terms of jokes. Let’s not forget that we have a generation that devoured the American version of the sitcom, and has grown up on similar content like Office Office (Pankaj Kapur-starrer) and Naveen Richards’ Better Life Foundation. We deserve better.

Starring Mukul Chadda, Gopal Dutt and Gauhar Khan, The Office showcases a boss’s ‘quirkiness’ by getting him to describe his Punjabiness as Fun-jabiness. It probably took a lot of brainstorming to  come up with name of the receptionist, Pammi (played by Samridhi Dewan), whose American counterpart is called Pam.

Twitter obviously isn’t amused at the very least, since the trailer dropped last night. Here are the unanimous, far-from-ideal reactions…

The Indian adaptation of The Office has been credited to Anurag Pandey, who has written the dialogue for Hotstar’s Criminal Justice (also a remake of a British original, that was later adapted into American hit, The Night Of) and the Cyrus Sahukar-starrer, Mind The Malhotras.

You can watch the trailer here.

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