The curious case of the most popular TV show in the world right now

How is The Office topping streaming charts around the world?

Back in 2007, a work mate and I had a ritual. We worked as news editors at Stuff.co.nz, and we were isolated, stuck in the corner of a gaping open plan office off New North Road in Auckland.

The rest of the website staff were down in Wellington so, siloed on our own, we got bored.

We played a lot of indoor sport: cricket stumps were up against one wall, and an indoor lawn bowls pitch was set aside. One slow long weekend we set up an obstacle course and held an ultra-competitive mountain bike time trial around the place.

Things got broken. Desks got tipped over. I think I crashed into a door. It was wild.

But, every Friday morning, all the shenanigans got put aside. No cricket, no lawn bowls. We made sure all our work was done early so we could jump on YouTube and watch the latest streams of our favourite show, the US version of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s brutally awkward UK original, The Office.

Back then, YouTube wasn’t the horrific, mind-altering wormhole nightmare it is now. It only let users upload 10 minutes of content, so we’d spend a lot of time searching for links that wouldn’t last long. Once we found them, we’d devour them, spending the rest of our Fridays quoting each other the best bits like insane super fans.

The point is, neither of us thought we were watching something that, more than 12 years later, would still be among world’s most watched television shows.

But it’s 2020, and it seems the exploits of Michael, Jim, Pam, Dwight, Angela and co are as relevent as ever.

Just ask Billie Eilish, the pop star who used quotes from the show in her song My Strange Addiction. She’s a total Office addict, estimating she’s seen each of the show’s 201 episodes more than 11 times. Eleven freaking times!

It’s true: here’s Rainn Wilson (Dwight) hilariously quizzing her about it.

Eilish was about four years old when The Office started airing in America, about 11 when it ended. And she loves it. She watches it at home, on tour, and in the toilet.

That’s insane.

Despite filming its final episode more than seven years ago, The Office is big. Huge. It’s one of the world’s biggest shows. In America, where it streams on Netflix, it’s regularly among the service’s most-watched shows. It’s safe to bet it’s doing big numbers on Neon, where it’s streaming in New Zealand.

Next year, The Office, along with its also very popular spin-off Parks & Recreation, move to Peacock, the streaming service NBC is in the process of launching, and it will probably become one of the biggest drawcards on there too.

The Office is now so big, there are two podcasts dedicated to it, a brilliant deep-dive Spotify eight-parter called An Oral History of The Office hosted by Brian Baumgartner (Kevin), and Office Ladies, an inferior but still entertaining rewatch effort hosted by Jenna Fischer (Pam) and Angela Kinsey (Angela).

I’m not knocking anyone for their Office fandom. I’m still a fan too. I watched an episode last night. Everyone says the best episode is The Dinner Party but I think it’s the one where Dwight cuts the face from a crash test dummy and pretends to be Hannibal Lector. Every line in that episode is an absolute zinger.

Ironically, that episode, from The Office’s fifth season, is called Stress Relief, which might help explain the inexplicable popularity of a TV show set in a place many people spend most of their day.

In a world where many people can’t go into the office, can’t get coffee with their workmates, can’t sit in a room with their boss, and can’t debate Westworld’s intricacies with their desk neighbours, the popularity of a TV show portraying people doing exactly, and a few other things, that makes a little more sense.

The Office is pure light-hearted stress relief, time out from the full-on craziness of the world right now. In fact, writing this has made me want to go and watch another episode right now - and I think I’ll start by re-watching Stress Relief again.