BBC Worldwide announced today that all episodes of Ricky Gervais’ hit comedy The Office will soon be available to download on iTunes, bringing one of the world’s most popular television shows to millions more.
iTunes users in the UK, the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany and France will be able to access the first and second series’, along with the Christmas special online. A special fifteen-minute interview with Ricky Gervais, discussing the making of the series, will also be available to download.
Image source: BBC
Starring Gervais as the fictional boss, David Brent, the socially awkward manager, along with his unnerved office staff, gained critical acclaim by UK viewers within days after the first broadcast went live ten years ago.
Until now, the comedy has only been available on DVD. The popular comedy, since its inception on BBC television in 2001, has been sold by the corporation to over 170 territories in 88 different countries, and has been remade in eight.
Though the comedy has since ported to the United States, with the main protagonist played by Steve Carroll, the original version of The Office is one of the most successful comedies of all time, winning numerous prestigious awards.
The U.S. version of the show has been available on iTunes since it first began broadcasting on BBC America.
The ground-breaking comedy reaching iTunes bears a similar reality to when Apple struck a deal to get the back catalogue of The Beatles albums on the online music store.
Starting out on XFM, a radio station in London, Gervais continues to record podcasts, which even to this day remain high on the iTunes best selling list.
Gervais, who was one of the few to spur on the ‘podcast revolution’ with his partner Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington — known the world over as a ‘man with a head like an orange’ — still have dozens of podcasts available on iTunes.
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