The Office - US now and UK series before

Isn't the branch closing/merging stuff copied from the UK version?

seapig...

Yes.

I remember a UK ep when they wanted to close the branch but Brent
stopped it by giving up a better job or something. Why did they merge
the Swindon branch into the Slough branch?

seapig...

They originally offered Brent a promotion, which would go along with
the Slough branch merging into the Swindon branch. Brent didn't get
the promotion, because he failed a physical (he tried to play it off
that he failed it on purpose, faking high blood pressure, to save the
branch), so they promoted the manager of the Swindon branch, and merged
Swindon into Slough.

Default User...

Well, he originally told them that he had turned it down so that the
branch wouldn't close. One of the guys later said that he'd heard that
David failed the physical.

I was a little surprised they didn't go with having Josh as Michael's
boss, but I guess they wanted to go with a different dynamic.
Presumably Jim will get that "number two" job that Jan mentioned. If
you thought Dwight hated him before . . .

The recent US ep showed how the Scranton branch was going to be closed
and then the head of Stamford branch suddenly took off so they closed
Stamford instead, moving some of their people to Scranton, including
Jim Halpert. Of course the UK series did not have an analogue for Jim
moving over.

seapig...

They changed things up a bit, mainly by making the other manager come
across as the sleazy one.

One of the upcoming US episodes will be written by Gervais and Merchant.

seapig...

I believe it's the November 30 episode.