Update 4/12/13: It has just been announced that December 24 will be IT Crowd Night on C4. Fans of Moss & co will get to see a new behind-the-scenes documentary, entitled The IT Crowd Manual, enjoy again the 2013 special reviewed below, defrag creator Graham Linehan’s own favourite episode and click send to vote for their own People’s Choice episode to be played on the night. Fans of the show should head to http://bit.ly/itcrowdvote to vote.
The cynics thought it would never happen, but it has. The original gang is back together for one last adventure. Despite Chris O'Dowd becoming a Hollywood big shot, Richard Ayoade being a rising filmmaker and Katherine Parkinson doing those, erm, Maltesers adverts (as well as being a new mum and doing proper serious acting) the gang has reunited for one final, no-holds-barred, hour-long IT Crowd Special, seven years after the series first started.
Final episodes are always tricky propositions. Do you tie up all the strands? Kill everyone off in a horrific plane crash or, more appropriately here, in an exploding laptop inferno? Instead in The Internet Is Coming, writer Graham Linehan has gone for a business-as-usual approach with a gentle subversive twist at the end.
We won't give away too many specific spoilers here. The nearest comparison is the very last episode of Seinfeld where Jerry & co end up in jail for a faintly ludicrous misdemeanour. Here Jen and Roy become embroiled in the modern equivalent of a jail sentence, they become the unwitting stars of a viral video which spoofs a number of recent virals.
It's funny to think than when The IT Crowd started social media was pretty primitive compared to the all-pervasive behemoth it is today. In one sense it is a shame the series is ending when there is so much potential for it. On the other The IT Crowd is not really about computers and the web at all. There are some lovely gags in this episode at the expense of desperately dull gamers who make their own review programmes, but much of the action has little to do with jokes about aspect ratios, bad beards and naffs fonts and everything to do with the awkward, almost artistic, sorry, autistic, interaction between the stars and the rest of the world. If it treads on slightly familiar ground with the plot of Moss magically becoming confident due to a simple change of underwear that hardly matters when it is a cue for a brilliant combination of sight gags and one-liners.
All the actors acquit themselves brilliantly. Matt Berry gets his teeth into his return as plummy-gobbed clot Douglas Reynholm - how much of the budget was blown on his white limousine? – and Noel Fielding pops up as downhearted goth Richmond Avenal. It's a shame original CJ-style boss Denholm Reynholm, aka Chris Morris, couldn't come back, but I think he jumped out of a window at the end of series one so that really would be stretching the bounds of credibility.
Not that this programme is averse to inviting the viewer to suspend their disbelief. Plenty of the humour is driven by the kind of absurd coincidences that Curb Your Enthusiasm would have rejected for being too ridiculous. Needless to say one incident involves a van with breasts on the front and there is a funeral scene just to remind viewers that cemetery etiquette is invariably good for a laugh. But any irritations will soon drift away because you will be laughing so much. The IT Crowd is that rare thing in comedy these days. Clever yet mainstream. Totally uncynical. Smart yet stupid. Cool yet accessible. Broad yet with a forensic eye for detail. Laugh-your-Homer-Simpson-socks-off funny. I can't think of anyone else who writes comedy like this for British television apart from Graham Linehan.
