I can’t have been the only geek in the UK eagerly awaiting the first episodes of Channel 4‘s new IT comedy, The IT Crowd, about a pair of awkward, ill-fitting, female starved IT support geeks, lost in the basement of a corporate building, managed by an attractive, computer illiterate young woman.

Maybe I’m too much of a geek, but the premise is ripe for comedy and witty one-liners. Geeks share so much in-joking and clever word play that I was expecting some compulsive viewing. Something seminal that geeks would remember, like say War Games, but in an office or The Office about computer nerds or something. Something that would appeal to people who have to deal with geeks as much as it would to the IT support, geek and hacker fraternity.

Sadly, I was very disappointed. The show opts for cheap parodies, exaggerated characters and farcical comedy, almost in the same kind of way that The Producers annoyed me so much. It was such a disappointment. I really thought that it could have been a great show if it had been written with clever, witty jokes rather than cheap, lowest common denominator puns.

It could have been so much better. Maybe somebody will do it better next time.