The Office has been named the best TV programme of the past 20 years.
The notoriously awkward comedy received its accolade at the Broadcast Awards held by the TV and radio industry magazine of the same name, the BBC reports. Following a vote by those in attendance at the event, The Office was named best programme ahead of fellow nominees Big Brother, Broadchurch, Gavin And Stacey and Life On Mars.
Created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the BBC sitcom followed the goings on at Wernham Hogg, a fictitious paper company based in Slough. It ran for 14 episodes between 2001 and 2003, before spawning an acclaimed US spin-off that aired between 2005 and 2013.
Merchant and Gervais did not attend the event, but both took to Twitter to thank Broadcast for the honour.
“@BroadcastAwards: The Office voted top show of the past 20 years. pic.twitter.com/vS2tsSMwY5” > Haven't won anything for a while so thanks guys
— Stephen Merchant (@StephenMerchant) February 4, 2015
Writing in Broadcast, the show's producer Jon Plowman recalled that The Office wasn't an instant hit for the BBC when it initially aired. "Series one famously had the lowest AI [audience appreciation] of any new BBC Two show that year," he wrote. "Ratings were rotten too, but they belatedly went up. [BBC Two] repeated it within a couple of months and it doubled its figures."
"The audience had got that it was OK to laugh even though there was no audience track or obvious jokes. It wasn't the first mock-doc, but it helped to make single-camera comedy more acceptable and fashionable."
The Office collected a host of awards during its initial run, including a Golden Globe for Best Television series: Musical or Comedy and several British Comedy Awards prizes.