BACK FOR GOOD

There are few episodes in the history of television as faultlessly perfect as The Office two-episode Christmas Special, which manages to combine comedy, pathos, love, and truth in equal measure.

What makes it so special, to my mind, is the redemption and resolution it offers to the most beloved characters from the series, including the tragic clown par excellence himself, David Brent (Ricky Gervais), who is here even given a glimpse of hope in the form of love—though his consistent shallowness, combined with hubris up to this point, has long threatened to torpedo any chance of sincere affection with a member of the opposite sex.

But such is the magic of Christmas that writers Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant knew they had to relent to a greater humanity in order to elevate the legacy of the universally loved show they created; and by giving David Brent a Scrooge-like second chance, they gave all of life’s losers a glimpse of something better for themselves.

It is the underpinning emotional intelligence of this two-episode special that raises it above the ordinary, and, of course, the final resolution of Tim (Martin Freeman) and Dawn (Lucy Davis), whose fate seemed ill-destined until a Secret Santa gift—the very definition of a “Lubitsch touch”—provides the perfect key to unlocking their coming together as one.

Every time I watch the final scenes of this special, accompanied by the retro synth sounds of Yazoo’s Only You, I’m reminded of its perfection and of how it pierces the heart so sweetly without once resorting to overt sentimentality. It’s as deft as any Ernst Lubitsch movie and as brilliantly observed as any social comedy of the past one hundred years.

Yes. It’s really that good.