The Internet Thing Crowd

The IT Crowd is a British sitcom by Channel 4, written by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O’Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson, Noel Fielding and Matt Berry. The “IT” in the show’s title can be pronounced as the letters I and T , as in the abbreviation for information technology, or as the word “it”.

It is a comedic adventures of a rag-tag group of technical support workers working for a large corporation. Pedal-stool, Damp-squid and Desk Rabbit are just few of the English words that were specifically used for the first time on TV on this show.

Set in the London offices of the fictional Reynholm Industries, the show revolves around the three staff members of its IT department: a geeky genius named Maurice Moss (Ayoade), the work-shy Roy Trenneman (O’Dowd), and Jen Barber (Parkinson), the department head/relationship manager, who knows nothing about IT. The show also focuses on the bosses of Reynholm Industries: Denholm Reynholm (Chris Morris) and later, his son Douglas (Matt Berry).

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The show adds a large number of references to geek culture and professionalism, mostly in set dressing and props. Dialogue (both technical and cultural) is usually authentic and any technobabble used often contains in-jokes for viewers knowledgeable in such subjects. Roy regularly wears shirts that feature abbreviations, such as OMFG and RTFM. Series 3 Episode 1 has Roy wearing the Music Elitism Venn Diagram tee and I Screw Robots sticker from the webcomic Diesel Sweeties. On occasion, there will be movie-style scenes that parody fight scenes and melodrama that departs from the multi-camera format.

The comedy premiered on Channel 4 on 3 February 2006, and ran for four series of six episodes each. Although a fifth series was commissioned, it was never produced. The programme was concluded with a special, one-off episode, aired on 27 September 2013.