That's a great idea, Theresa.
Get that to me by the end of play today
and action it ASAP.
Hello again. Now, let's take a look at the history of the department
at Reynholm Industries,
from our humble beginnings when everyone hated us,
to our recent abrupt and unconvincing rise to power.
It's a story for the ages.
Let's look at it now.
Subtitles by MemoryOnSmells http://UKsubtitles.ru.
The IT Crowd first booted up and onto our screens in 2006
and since then, there have been four series and most recently, a one-hour special.
Probably my favourite sitcom, I would say, actually. Yes.
Let's get started, shall we? What?
The show centres on the adventures
of four magnificently silly characters,
three hapless employees of Reynholm Industries.
Roy... What did I tell you?! ..Moss... I am a giddy goat.
Jen...
and their boss, Douglas... Goddamn these electric sex pants.
No-one really knows what Reynholm Industries does.
But whatever it is, they need an efficient and responsive
IT department.
Get out of the lift. Get out of the lift.
We were like these kind of fictitional creatures,
abandoned to a nether region of cobwebs and second toilets.
Oh, my God.
Like all good sitcoms, it's a bunch of outsiders
against the world, which I think is appealing.
Creator and writer Graham Linehan brought to life a classic sitcom
about a corporate world where nothing works,
least of all the IT department,
and which celebrated the heroic misadventures of what
the show called "standard nerds".
Often they're incredibly intelligent people
who have to do these really boring jobs that are just beneath them
and I thought that that was a nice way of starting.
Graham, you know, is a very warm, great, comic writer.
He came up with the idea, injected the warmth.
It's big because of him.
The sparkling scripts were brought to life by some of Britain's
most brilliant and inventive comic actors.
Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson,
Chris O'Dowd,
Matt Berry, Noel Fielding
and Chris Morris.
The writer of Father Ted and Chris Morris was going to be in it,
so, you know, I was really excited. It was a real gift.
This multi award-winning comedy has won fans around the world.
The geeks really have inherited the earth.
Excuse me. Yes, miss.
The elements of slapstick and broad, physical humour
and visual gags and references, all these things make it very accessible.
At the heart of the IT Crowd is Maurice Moss
who is supposedly the brains of the IT department.
I guess Moss is very, um...
childlike and very positive, I would say.
Well, I think that Moss is a classic square.
He's a nerd, a timeless nerd.
Oh, dear me!
What you laughing at, eh? This flipping circuit board, Jen.
Some chump has run the data lines right through the power supply.
Amateur hour.
I've got tears in my eyes.
It's a very broad character.
He's got his hairstyles, he's got his clothes...
I just had a eureka moment.
And yet there's something very authentic about his betrayal.
Why do I keep my phone in my trouser pocket?
It's too far. But look at this, top pocket.
Yeah?
See how smooth that is? Ooh, mama!
The thing about Moss he was just a big amalgam of
various different, I guess, stereotypes
and also little bits of uniqueness that were brought to it
by me and Richard and they all just kind of morphed together.
Your name is Maurice Moss, is it not?
Bit nervous. Sorry.
It's fizzy. It's very fizzy. It's fizzy. It's gone fizzy.
Ow! Come on.
That's electric. There's electric in there.
Got a shock.
Richard is, despite appearances, a very bright guy
and very precise and incredibly funny,
like, just so dry
and the fact that he plays such an uncool character
is one of my favourite things in the world
cos he's one of the coolest people I know.
The character was occasionally able to adopt a more confident persona,
like a child imitating a cowboy or something,
but then would just drop it and it wouldn't particularly continue.
Roy, can I have a natter with you?
It's about private man's business.
I'm sure you boys will understand.
Yeah.
Excuse me, please.
Richard loves playing overconfident people and it was nice to be able
to give him a chance to do that every now and again.
Will I see you tonight?
Not now, Ivana.
Did you have sex with that lady?
If you call that mindless, animalistic rutting sex, then yes.
I suppose we did.
He's like one of my best friends, actually,
so I love watching him perform.
Just got that weird voice, hasn't he? It's amazing.
All right, Noel.
His sort of voice sounds like Graham Coxon's, really.
Oh, no, I've forgot, I can't tie my shoelaces up.
Apparently, he remembers me doing this, but I don't remember doing it.
I said, "Yeah, I just see a really, really nerdy guy just very, very
"kind of geeky and nerdy, you know,
"and focused on things that aren't important and stuff",
and he said, "Oh, yeah, what kind of voice should I put on?",
and I said, "Oh, no, just your normal voice,"
so you know... But I think, really, what I meant when I said that was,
I just wanted Richard.
He was a bit of a grower for me, actually, in the IT Crowd
and, you know, I wish he'd do a bit more performing, actually.
What are you saying, newbie?
I came here to drink milk and kick ass...
and I've just finished my milk.
Moss' friend and colleague in the IT department is Roy Trenneman,
Reynholm Industries' resident shambles of a man.
He was slightly more capable of talking to people
from the outside world than Moss was,
but essentially, he was that man-child
that's slightly kind of socially inept.
There's a lack of self-awareness, maybe, in Roy in that he thinks
he's cooler than that, he thinks
he's on the cool edge of nerdiness, I think.
The, the first thing I thought was very important was that
Roy shouldn't be played by an Irish person and then Chris came in
and he was just amazing and, and, you know, and I thought,
"Well, I'll actually be brought up against the race relations board
"if I don't hire Chris because he's obviously the best man for the job."
I remember in the first series really enjoying Roy in Messy Joe's
and he was just trying so hard to be a bastard,
cos that's what he thought that women wanted to go out with.
This seems an unusual place for someone like you to want to meet.
Yeah, well, everyone needs a place to come to be alone.
His absolute snark and, and misanthropy
is really bang on for a certain tribe of nerds.
He is YouTube commenter number three who says, "No, it's just shit."
No, no, no, Jen, it's infected.
If this was a human being, I'd shoot it in the face.
I like the fire in the Sea Parks.
I think that's one of my favourite storylines for him.
Her parents died in a fire.
Oh, God, I'm sorry, that's horrible.
Yeah, yeah... Yeah, it was a fire...
at Sea Parks.
Sea Parks? Yeah.
It just seems like a weird place to go on fire.
It's a very weird place to go on fire!
A fire at a Sea Parks!?
It's the weirdest thing I've ever heard!
That's probably one of the ones I get quoted most is...
"A fire... in a Sea Parks?!"
That was actually one of the most fun things to do on the day, I remember.
Just the incredibleness of it.
He cannot rest, he literally cannot sleep
until he's worked out how a fire
could have happened at Sea Parks.
There are 12 exits.
What are you doing?
Golly.
What?
What are you doing on the computer?
Masturbating.
And he works it out and his emotions at that moment are pure satisfaction
that he has solved a problem.
I see.
So if the fire started here and they were there,
then there's no way they could have escaped.
So they must have been there.
Ah, ah!
Will you just... stop it?
Chris is a very good actor so he's able to actually imbue things
with emotion rather than just choose what level of nasal to do.
Oh.
Aah.
Hello, hello, are you all right in there?
Um...
Do you need help?
I'm disabled.
I do love people though who, instead of just accepting that
maybe I better stop this because this might get a bit embarrassing,
will actually go the full way and lie down on the toilet floor
and pretend to be disabled.
Oh, my God, what happened?
I fell off the toilet.
For me, that's a certain kind of bravery.
There's a certain kind of bravery in that, that, that I kind of admire.
How are you disabled?
Leg disabled.
Well, I'm being, do you have a wheelchair?
Yes.
Where?
Stolen.
What comes across very obviously at the sort of core
and that warm core is, is Chris' sort of natural warmth.
Chris O'Dowd is just, he's just got funny bones.
Oh, thanks again, man, this really
does feel so much better.
Ah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, all finished.
Mwah.
Roy and Moss have a very special relationship.
Despite their occasional ups and downs, they make the perfect couple.
I think that what's really developed over the series
is the relationship between Roy and Moss.
They're sort of like the couple.
It's such a lovely day. Shall we go to the park?
Yeah. Let's have a lovely lunch in the park.
I always thought that they met each other at college
on the first day and then never met anybody else
and that was it.
They maybe lived together and would stay up playing games
and they just never got laid.
Go, go, go.
Ooh! What have we here?
Hello.
So tell me, who wears the trousers in this relationship?
What?
Oh. No, we're not homosexuals. We're just very good friends.
So you've never had a look? At what?
His bum!
I've seen it when he crosses in front of my desk
or should he bend over to pick something up.
I'd love to work in THAT office.
They are basically, you know, like two 14-year-olds
who've suddenly discovered a best friend in the other person.
But, you know, you want people who seem like friends.
If they didn't, you wouldn't want to spend time with them.
Let's glare. What?
Let's glare at people, like a couple of tough nuts.
Oh! OK.
Let's glare at this sucker on his way to work.
Feeding the corporate machine.
And, er...
He's coming up. He's getting on the bus! Oh, don't, don't.
Why did you suggest him? You could have suggested anybody.
What are you doing there? We weren't. We thought you were someone else.
What's it to you?
It's OK. We're bunking off and he's excited.
We're bunking off!
It reminds me a little bit of Steptoe And Son because one drags the other down
and Chris always seems like a sort of...
He's frustrated, wants to break out of this sort of dynamic
but can't and ultimately is as dependent on Moss as Moss is on him.
Jen should never have ended up in the basement.
She knows nothing about COMPuters
and has no interest in learning because she's better than IT.
She's going places.
I think Katherine Parkinson is amazing in her role
because Graham has created a woman that I recognise in real life.
One of the first things we auditioned
was the interview about what she knows about computers.
She was doing all that mouse, mices, all that stuff beautifully.
So, you know, she was really funny.
I'll put you in IT because you said on your CV you have a lot of experience with computers.
I did say that on my CV, yes.
I have a lot of experience with the whole... computer... thing.
You know, emails, sending emails,
er, receiving emails and deleting emails.
The ordinary person up against this sort of leviathan
of 20th Century technology...
Clicking, double clicking... The computer screen of course.
Which goes back to Chaplin's Modern Times and Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle.
I don't know whether it's necessarily that she's a likeable character.
I think it's more that there is that shallow, vain, egotistic aspect to all of us.
Is this a new desk? Yeah. I thought I needed some new furniture
so I got some stuff from upstairs. Sit down, please.
I think as the series went on, Jen became more of a part of the trio
rather than being an adversary kind of figure.
And she became more and more socially inept.
The best thing about the job was meeting Katherine for the first time
and working with Katherine because I hadn't worked with her before,
and, you know, I thought she was great.
I'd always want to do stuff with her again.
# I love him, I love him, I love him so! #
Goodness me. What, what, what would you term what just happened there?
Norman says my voice is extraordinary.
He's right.
Oh, this is a long song.
In her love life she's as disastrous as the rest of womankind,
it seems to me.
Let me guess.
You're a... red wine person.
Yes, yes, I am.
Oh, I would be too, if we could get SOME SERVICE ROUND HERE!
Yeah, you, Hucknall. When you're Simply Red-y!
The brilliant episode with Adam Buxton where he thinks she's died
and then goes round telling everyone in the office
that he was the last person she'd had sex with.
I'm a bit stressed and it's all... just fun and games.
I think the moment of her in the rain, you know, at the window,
that's exactly what I wanted it to be, you know.
The Haunting Of Bill Crouse,
that's exactly how I saw it fit that shape, you know.
Stop telling people I slept with you.
I will, I will! I'm sorry.
You bastard.
Complete bastard!
I know, I'm sorry.
You bastard!
Despite being technically superior
to everyone else at Reynholm Industries
and ensuring that the computers keep ticking along,
Moss, Roy and Jen are always treated as the social underclass.
The brilliant thing he did was create a world,
an enclosed world, a bubble really, for these characters to function in
where insane things could happen.
I know that the place looks like a bit of a mess
but it's actually a very delicate ecosystem. Ecosystem.
Everything is connected. Connected.
It's like the rainforest. Much like the rainforest.
You change one thing, even the tiniest bit,
and the whole rainforest dies.
I had a brother who was working in IT, still works in IT,
so I kind of knew that world a little bit
and how socially inept he and his friends were.
And just the grumpiness of that situation.
The things that Roy is being asked to do are so beneath his capabilities
that he's become... He's started to hate people.
And it's not them. It's definitely me phoning them up.
I'm the annoying one that can't do the simple thing.
You can totally see why they would be, you know, a little bit angry sometimes.
Hello. IT.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Turn it off and on again.
Have you tried turning it off... You know what? I'm sick of saying that.
Its kind of lasting legacy for me will be its technical advice
which is basically turn it off, turn it on again.
That's the legacy of the IT Crowd for me.
Er, the BUTTON turns it on.
Yeah. Yeah...
You do know how a button works, don't you?
"The button? No, the button. No, not my shirt button."
No, there you go! No, there you go. I just heard it come on.
No, no, that's the music you hear when it comes on.
No, that's the music you hear when it...
I'm sorry, are you from the past?
"Are you from the past?"
I mean, it is so absolutely wonderful, it really is.
I want it on a sampler over my bed.
Up on the boss level,
Reynholm Industries has been tormented by two different bosses.
Firstly by the demented and deranged Denholm.
I am declaring war.
I can see that got your attention.
The casting of Chris Morris, absolute genius
because it was so just incredibly exciting to see Chris Morris entering into the spirit
of this completely extraordinarily over-the-top character.
Come on! OK!
He brings this slightly terrifying edge.
Very strict. You don't want to get on his wrong side.
You fucked up.
A slightly sociopathic sort of performance.
See this balloon, Jen?
I'm going to burst it but I'm not going to tell you when.
Do you feel stressed, Jen? Jen! Jen!
Look at that.
That's your peace of mind
and it's going to go bang.
I'd never met him and was terrified. I was a big fan, like everybody.
He just couldn't have been more welcoming and fun.
I had a great time with him.
I was mostly reacting to mad stuff he was doing
because his character was kind of like that, which I was happy about,
because I wouldn't have been comfortable trying to make him laugh.
Chris really had that authority that I was looking for,
which I loved so much in his Day Today and Brass Eye persona.
He set the tone brilliantly in the first series because...
There's a way of doing Graham's material that isn't...
You can't just be realistic with it. That's not really what's required.
Sorry to interrupt, but there are some policemen here.
They say they need to speak to you about irregularities in the pension fund.
I see. Could you make them a cup of tea please, Stephanie?
His suicide is, for me, one of the best moments in all the series.
Following his abrupt resignation,
Douglas, his even more bonkers son
arrives with an even bigger ego and a rampant libido.
FATHER!
I think Douglas had possibly the best introduction
to a comedy character I have ever seen.
Unhand me, Priest. Where is your God? Where is your God now?
Here lies a great man, a great man.
FATHER!
Matt Berry sort of took it on a notch, I think, really, from Chris Morris.
He really nailed it, you know, with his daft voice.
It's a tall order, you know, filling his boots,
so I was pretty keen just to go in, you know, and do my own thing
and if it worked, it did,
and if it didn't, you know, they'd let me know pretty quick!
I think Douglas is a complete tool.
What department is this?
Sorry? Well, if it's work related, then obviously you'll know what department this is.
What department is this?
Some sort of homosexual department?
He had to be so confident and so sort of privileged
that he didn't care whether things, you know, would come out wrong,
whether they'd cause, you know, offence
or, you know, make him look like a fool
because that would be, you know, impossible for him.
It's all the worst qualities you can give a man.
Sex mad. Well, that's not too bad, I suppose.
Misogynist, mean, vain and bullying.
The episode where he does end up dating the journalist who comes to interview him is astonishing.
Favourite popular figure? Churchill.
What is it you like about him?
I love the way he says...
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
The story is that this woman ends up being a person who's...
A man who's had a sex change.
April, I love you.
What!
That's right. I totally love the bloody arse off you.
And the best thing is before he makes this realisation,
it's the perfect relationship
because they're watching the darts in bed,
they're eating takeaway, they're having competitions to see who can down the fastest pint
and then going home and shagging each other.
It is the perfect relationship for Douglas
until of course he realises exactly what's going on.
Oh, poppet. To think when we met, you were so worried that you came from Iran.
Almost the joy of it is it's so ridiculous
that he misheard that in such a pathetic way.
A man! I said I used to be a man.
You used to be a man?
Yes.
Oh, God!
Roy, Moss and Jen aren't alone in the basement.
Behind the mysterious red door lives Richmond.
It just shows how brilliant Graham's writing is,
to get a character who's, you can have a kind of Edward Scissorhands
weirdo in the middle of an IT department and it works completely.
The first thing I ever did was, she opened the door and I was there,
and it was sort of like, it was a great thing, it was a great reveal.
He's just in his own happy world, hiding in his server room,
I assume that's what it's supposed to be
and he doesn't know what the blinking lights do.
I mean, I don't know what any of this stuff even does.
What's going on there?
I don't know.
Is it good that it's doing that?
Occasionally, it doesn't do that, and I think I should tell them,
but often I just look away.
Jen and Katherine have soft spots for Richmond.
Richmond.
He's so sweet and vulnerable.
Why is he out of his room?
Well, he's going to come out and play with us for a while.
I think she was supposed to find me a bit horrendous,
but she always found me quite, she was always quite motherly to me.
I always sort of quite liked Richmond.
They had a bit of chemistry, which they wasn't supposed to have at all.
To me, he seems like a sort of damaged bird
that needs to be looked after
and he's sort of too vulnerable for this world, really.
Noel isn't like that, but Richmond is.
Noel would come in in, like, a pink cowboy hat, and like,
studded boots, and make us feel like we were at a rock concert.
Walking around before he got into costume, or whatever.
He made, like, the offices out downstairs feel like
we were backstage at the O2...
with The Darkness.
Richmond! Huh.
Get back to your room.
Oh, I'd watch Noel play darts. I think he's just fantastic.
Noel's character, you know, his voice is fantastic.
I think it's the funniest voice I've ever heard Noel do.
I wish he'd talk like that the whole time.
I'd had an idea, cos I'd watched the Pink Floyd documentary
and I was fascinated by how posh they were, and I just sort of,
I sort of had that kind of voice and it's quite soft
and sort of thought it was quite funny for a Goth to be quite
sort of posh, cos they never really...
they're not Cockneys, are they ever, Goths,
they're always quite softly spoken and English,
almost sort of ghostly characters, like you could blow away in the wind.
You know, when you laugh, I can see the outline of your skull.
You have a beautiful skull.
For someone who's so... always looks like Ronnie Wood,
he is very brilliant at doing lots of different characters and voices.
I keep getting typecast, actually, as vampires, Goths, vampires,
Goths, ghosts, ghouls, monsters.
I've cornered that market.
Yeah, like a sort of sub-standard Johnny Depp.
Oh, Richmond. What?
Oh, Richmond, not you too.
I'm sorry, Richmond, I'll just get a bin bag...
There's one more unique element of the show we haven't mentioned.
The studio set is a character all of its own.
I'll always love this set
because it's so, you know, it,
it really ended up looking, well, not ended up,
a very fine production design team
made it look like I wanted it to, you know.
It looks like the inside of my head.
It looks like the inside of my office as well, a little bit.
It's the same kind of cheerful mess.
How can you two live like this?
How can you two...
Don't Google the question, Moss.
Cos a lot of the things on the walls, not all of them,
but many of the things on the walls were sent in by people.
This is a fanzine that, that I liked, that the guy sent in.
He was delighted when we ended up using it
for a sort of publicity shot.
A lot of the stuff up here is just stuff that I'm a fan of.
There's some things here that I didn't ask for,
I didn't plan, and they just kind of,
they just kind of came, like this wonderful collection
here of old Atari games, which is just a lovely little touch.
In the drawer here is the...
is Douglas's electric sex pants...
And now for your bonus. I could get to like these.
Just the job, good work.
We always associated Roy more with music and, you know,
this kind of underground art, and over on Moss's side
we associated him with the hardware, you know.
All the stuff that was donated to us
by the Centre for Computer History in Cambridge, and this is
the kind of thing that, whenever I would share a photograph online,
people would say, "They've got a pet, they've got a pet or
"they've got... What else have they got, they've got an Altair."
This drives nerds mental. They get very excited about this.
I think this is pretty good too, an Orec, and there's the one I had,
when I was a kid, a Spectrum, a ZX Spectrum.
Oh, yeah, board games.
Now, this is something that, because of the last episode,
people might think that I was slagging off board gamers,
but I'm actually a huge board games fan,
and it was all done from a position of affection.
I've been looking at the expansion to textile merchant.
Textile merchant.
Norfolk edition.
Two games by Raina Kinitsky, hold on to your hat.
It's going to be a bumpy...
That was a request by Richard.
Richard's a big fan of the band Pivot. I like them too,
but I hadn't thought of getting them in the show until he said it.
Oh, yeah, over here we have some classic
Dungeons and Dragons-style figures.
These are the actual metal ones, these are the hand-painted
lead figures that I used to play with when I was a kid.
The thing about role-playing games is that, you know,
they're about story-telling so, you know, it was just,
when I was a kid, it was just one more way to tell stories.
Yes!
Oh!
Direct hit.
The knife cleaves his head in twain
and some of his brains runneth down John 2's invisibility cloak.
Eiffel Tower.
Oh.
And into Jen's office.
This is, of course, the internet from...
from the Speech episode.
What is it?
This, Jen, is the internet.
To be honest with you, it's a joke I wish I'd done more,
which is Jen's misunderstanding
or lack of interest or confusion when it comes to the internet,
meeting the boys' kind of sense of, you know, devilment.
Oh, no, no, no, Jen, no, this,
this needs to go straight back to Big Ben.
Big Ben?
Yeah. It goes on top of Big Ben,
that's where you get the best reception.
Well, I promise, I won't let anything happen to it.
No, Jen, I'm sorry,
but the elders of the internet would never stand for it.
It was a really nice little, little episode, I'm really glad,
and really it's one of the ones I'm proudest of.
So, can I have it?
You can.
Oh, don't forget your speech. Oh, thank you.
Sh. Sh.
Definitely ended up being the kind of place that not only would I,
you know, did I like seeing it on screen,
I would actually like to work here, you know.
Oh, right, it's not real, sorry.
It was on this set that the studio audience watched our heroes
and their disasters unfold during each weekly live recording.
Every week we were rehearsing and then we'd put it in front of an audience on Friday night,
and the actors, they can't help it, they see the audience
as a theatre audience, and it's going to be a show that they can do once
for this audience, so it's very, very, it's very nerve-racking.
It's one of the reasons I like it, because it makes us all work harder.
There's a rigour in a studio audience record.
It really focuses your mind, you know,
you come up with better jokes, the beats are clearer
because everybody is worried about that Friday night.
'It's incredibly jangly on the nerves. The day is very long.'
It starts at about seven in the morning,
but you're not recording until about 8pm,
and then it doesn't finish until about 11.
So, by the end you're really deranged,
and I keep wondering whether
it would be a completely different show if everyone wasn't so tired.
I think people's extreme exhaustion is the house style.
Stuff that isn't shot in front of an audience
is just a case of a very quiet room
and someone saying "go", then you go, then they say "stop"
and you stop and that's it, you know, and then you spend the rest
of the day listening to another actor go,
"I don't know whether I was any good there, you know,
"I don't know what I..." You know what I mean?
Whereas this, you know straight away, cos they let you know.
In the past, I have found it a bit, I've felt a bit threatened
by it and sort of got a bit nervous about the studio audience,
but over the series I've really begun to embrace it
and really enjoy it.
That was all getting a little bit...
Just keep rolling, yeah?
It's a great experience in timing and, you know,
kind of various things. I mean, I really like it.
I think it's just a real buzz.
It's quite scary, and I think that makes everyone better,
sort of forces you into a position
where you've got to be good and tight.
It works very well in that environment and maybe
because they probably are all very comfortable with each other
and know that they're going to work well with each other,
then that does help if you're recording in front of an audience.
A bonus for the audience was the regular cameo appearances
by well-known British comedy faces.
Hello.
'Kevin's character's based on me'
dealing with the help desk from my PC, which was, they'd always be
French and they'd have an incredibly thick accent, so I'd be lying on
the floor looking at the completely indecipherable mess of wires,
with the guy going, "Av you busen ford?"
and I'd be like, "Have I what? Sorry."
"Av you bussed the verd?" "Have I bust the ford?"
Can I buy you uv-estis-use?
'So we started going through the scene and we did a take'
and he was just pressing through from the control booth
and he said, "More French, more silly", and I said,
"Look, you know, Graham, I've spent months
"perfecting a lower middle class Dijon accent." And he said,
"Well, that was a waste of time, now do it more French and more silly."
I've got one of your laptops.
It won't get past the loading screen.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Yes. Look, is there someone else I can talk to?
There is no-one else available.
In the end I was getting really upset, I was saying, you know,
I said, "Graham, you know, you're asking me
"to compromise artistic truth and reality for a cheap joke."
And his answer to that was,
"Oh, you're asking me to compromise..."
It's a Zubion, I think.
Oh, Zubion, you say you've been having problems with the Zubion...
I didn't get that.
And in the end, he seemed satisfied.
It took nine hours and I left the studio a broken man,
'but I've looked back at it since then and I've realised that
'Graham was exactly right, '
and my only criticism would be that it
should have actually been more French and more silly.
'Hello?'
The IT Crowd won numerous awards
and the stars of the show have gone global.
But they all came back to the basement one last time
to make the brilliant and apparently final special episode.
Big films, directing, theatrical, all these...
all these major kind of milestones in their careers
and they come back to Reynholm, to Reynholm Industries.
Come on, who are we? Who are we?
I want to hear you say it.
We're the IT Department, Reynholm Industries.
You're goddamn right we are.
It's a testament to the show, isn't it, that,
that everyone came back for it?
For one last job. Just when they thought they were out,
Graham pulled them right back in.
I had the script ready and we kept looking for this window to do
it in and suddenly I was told we have a two week window to do it.
It felt good. I was delighted we got the chance to do one last one.
And it was a great way to show how brutal the ageing process is
and has been to all of us
and that even people on TV can't escape Mother Nature.
It feels odd because you suddenly get back in the room together
and it is like no time has passed whatsoever,
but there's something very nice about that.
I realised it was happening and I think just Twittered in
and said, "I'm around cos I'm writing, so if you do want me
"to do anything, like a little cameo or something," and he phoned me.
I was like, "Yeah, that'll be great!" I was like, "OK".
It was good, I mean, you know, it's just,
you just put on, you know, a three piece suit and, you know,
be a huge dick and that's all it is, it's as simple as that.
Well, with the special, one of the things he wanted to do with
the writing was to give everyone their own story, which they had.
You just sold a brother some slacks.
And also to try and hark back
and just have a few pointers reminding people of the series.
I'm such an idiot. I've got a robot hand.
It felt like Graham was taking the opportunity to
say some things about the current situation with social media,
with Twitter, with, you know, YouTube and all of that
and the kind of hysteria that surrounds people
saying or doing "the wrong thing" in heavy quotes.
It's been called the viral video of the year.
A woman throws her coffee onto a tramp
and then a man has an argument with a small barista.
You're just too small.
The barista goes to cross the road and is hit by a van with breasts.
That kind of, that mob mentality of the internet where, where...
where people see something and judge immediately on that
and there's huge pitchforks or twitchforks
or chitchforks, as I suppose it would be in Graham's world, being raised
and poor Jen and Roy having to sit there and wade through it all.
We thought, how can we best show that this has gone viral rather than just saying it?
So Graham had the great idea of just sort of asking fans or anyone
out there if they'd want to take a photo of themselves in front
of a monument that was recognisable, looking horror-struck at having
seen the video of Jen throwing coffee over the poor homeless woman.
As the identities of Coffee-toss Tramp Bitch
and Small Person Racist are finally revealed,
we at Channel 4 News ask, what the hell is wrong with people?
I like the fans being involved in that way, especially when,
especially when it makes sense in, in a... in a kind of story way.
We had, oh, 200-300 of these photos came in
and it was terrific, so you'll see on there everything from,
there are two Daily Telegraph journalists outside
the real Number 10, a lady in Tiananmen Square,
there were also a couple who
must have hopped over the hedge into the grounds of Craggy Island House,
where Father Ted was set. So for those who want to, you know,
stop-frame it and have a look,
you'll find some very special photos there.
I loved the special. I thought it was a brilliant balance of call-backs
and fantastic new material.
Let's hide it.
What?
The internet.
Oh!
Because we told you that that was the internet.
I think my favourite bit in the whole special, actually,
was Moss getting in the phone box and taking his trousers off.
I'd like to know how many men around the UK
slipped on a pair of women's slacks, just to test confidence theory.
Thank you.
What was quite nice was when we came back
and I put the costume on from the original, from the first series.
I was quite glad I fitted into it, actually.
A little fatter but I could just about squeeze into it.
We hit upon the different thing of him
just appearing behind Jen's shoulder in her office
and that was really funny and then, we got him to help her.
We wanted just him to glide out of it
and we thought of all sorts of things and in the end I said,
"Why don't we just put him on a little skate," which is just a board
with some wheels on it, the simplest, old-fashioned way of doing it.
Don't lurk!
Where did he go? Where did who go?
It was quite nice, actually, doing that
and nice doing it in front of an audience again.
Yeah, it was quite nice. That night was really nice, actually.
I was so glad to be involved.
I think last episodes of great shows that have huge
followings, there's a certain amount of pressure
cos you want... the fans want to feel that it's a cap, that it's a
final kind of comment on the whole history of the show in a way.
They want a certain amount of resolution,
they want to feel that it feels like a final episode and this one did.
Is what's happening good, now?
Is this good? Yes, it's a very good outcome.
Oh, my God, I think we've come out on top. I can't believe it.
We've come out on top.
Because Richard was the person who I'd built the show around,
so it made sense that he should be the person who
turns out the light, you know.
In a way I'm delighted that they made it out of the basement.
In another way, when Moss turned out the basement light
for the final time, I felt my heart fracture.
There aren't many episodes of the IT Crowd that are trying
to be moving in any way and I think it would be awful if they did.
But this one just had the right amount of sentimentality
and sweetness at the end. Yeah, brilliant.
In some ways it's just a normal IT Crowd episode
but it's nice to take them for one last spin.
Weirdly, it felt like things had come around
and actually this show would work perfectly if it were to start now
because all of that stuff is so huge.
Loads of Twitter and Facebook stuff.
And actually the world has come around to fit perfectly
into Graham's vision of the show in the first place, I think.
I feel that what was most beguiling about the IT Crowd
was that at its core is a real warmth between the characters.
They are actually quite supportive of each other
and I think that's what sort of makes it stand out, really.
I think it's a real shame that they're not doing any more.
What are they up to now, the characters?
What are they up to now?
I think they'll be down in that basement.
They will have made such a hash of running anything.
Douglas will have suddenly found, you know, the top price lawyer
to get him out of any problem, he'll have a new suit and he'll be
back at his place and you can bet your life, they'll still be there.
I imagine he'll do the exact same thing for a long time
and would be very happy doing that.
She needs to grow up.
She needs to pack in Reynholm Industries, she's not suited to it.
Stop wearing the suits and the heels.
She can't even walk in heels, she looks like a prat in heels.
He'll be dead. He'll be dead in a light aircraft.
It'll be like whatshisface, John Denver.
He'll go that way, he'll go in his own aircraft that he'll be
arrogant enough to think he doesn't need anyone else to
pilot it with him and he'll go straight into a canyon.
I hope.
I like the idea of going back and doing the show in ten years' time,
and Jen and I will be married and divorced
and Moss and I will be living above Matt Berry's house in the Hamptons.
All of us just happy, finally.
Subtitles by MemoryOnSmells http://UKsubtitles.ru.