Ricky Gervais suggests The Office would be made differently now: ‘People have lost their sense of irony and context’

The BBC ‘would worry about some of the subjects and jokes’, claimed Gervais

Ricky Gervais has claimed The Office might have been made differently today, because “the BBC have got more and more careful”.

The hit sitcom, which ran for 14 episodes from 2001 to 2003, saw Gervais play gauche and offensive office manager David Brent, and helped launch a wave of British “cringe comedy”.

In an interview with Times Radio, Gervais claimed that the broadcaster “would worry about some of the subjects and jokes, even though they were clearly ironic and we were laughing at this buffoon being uncomfortable around difference”.

“This was a show about everything,” he added. “It was about difference, it was about sex, race, all the things that people fear to even be discussed or talked about now, in case they say the wrong thing and they are cancelled.”

“I think if this was put out now, some people have lost their sense of irony and context.”

The comments come amid a wider societal discussion about so-called cancel-culture. Earlier this week, a number of academics and writers, including JK Rowling, Margaret Atwood and Noam Chomsky, signed an open letter criticising an alleged culture of public shaming, and asserting their right to free speech.

The letter has come under criticism for its implicit association with Rowling’s recent comments made on social media, which have widely been called “transphobic”, as well as its conflation of accountability with silencing.

While Gervais stated on the radio that there were “outrage mobs that take everything out of context”, he argued that free speech was not the same as criticism-free speech.

“Some people think freedom of speech means, I should be able to say anything without consequences,” he said, ”and it doesn’t mean that.”

Asked whether he was “cancel-proof”, Gervais said: “I’m not cancel-proof, I just don’t care.

“I’m cancel-proof in the sense that I’ve got enough money [already]. If they started taking things back, then I’d worry.”