Chris Wasser: Can Domhnall Gleeson breathe fresh life into ‘The Office’ revival?

We’ve watched him play a deranged serial killer in The Patient; a broken-hearted scientist in Alice & Jack; an oddball sidekick to an irksome manchild in the bafflingly disorganised Frank of Ireland, and a slippery White House counsel for the Nixon administration in HBO’s scattershot political satire White House Plumbers.

An eclectic line-up, but there is a commonality there: they were all television shows.

A quick glance at the actor’s CV confirms our suspicions: it’s been ages since Gleeson appeared in a film. The last time we saw him on the big screen was in 2021’s Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway. Before that, it was 2019’s The Kitchen (a clumsy crime feature, with Melissa McCarthy).

That same year, he appeared in his third Star Wars outing, the box-office devouring The Rise of Skywalker.

Three movies in five years? That’s a peculiar number for any performer, especially Gleeson who, in 2015, starred in four Oscar-nominated big-screen ventures (Ex Machina, Brooklyn, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Revenant). We are in no way suggesting that Gleeson’s career has stalled – far from it. He’s just taken a different path, and Gleeson: The Television Star keeps himself busy.

There have been a couple of bumps in the road. Run, an inventive comedy thriller in which he played a smooth-talking life guru opposite the brilliant Merritt Wever, was cancelled after just one season.

The aforementioned Frank of Ireland, a wonky sitcom Gleeson developed with his brother Brian, never made it past the first round. This year’s Alice & Jack, co-starring Andrea Riseborough, was a bit a of a let-down, too. Gleeson and Riseborough worked well together, but their whiny, self-absorbed characters were impossible to root for.

Without a doubt, it’s 2022’s The Patient that tops the contemporary Gleeson Telly Charts. A gripping 10-part mini-series, this nerve-shredding psychological thriller starred Gleeson as a demented loner named Sam who believes that the only way to save his murderous soul is to kidnap his poor therapist (Steve Carell), lock him in a basement and talk things out.

It’s a phenomenal show, fabulously plotted and wonderfully performed, and Gleeson was awarded a Golden Globe nomination for his career-best performance as a yappy sociopath who struggles to control his temper.

We’ve become used to seeing Gleeson on the box – the medium suits him, and whenever his name enters the conversation now, I immediately assume it’s because of a television role. All of which leads us to the news that Gleeson is set to star in a new spin-off of The Office.

There is much to unpack in that sentence. The world, you may agree, does not need a new version of the beloved workplace mockumentary sitcom. The award-winning US remake of the Ricky Gervais classic did everything it was supposed to.

It was funny, sweet, and it somehow managed to eclipse the original BBC hit. It also made stars out of its central cast members (Steve Carell, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson and the great John Krasinski included), and though it perhaps overstayed its welcome towards the end of an epic, nine-season run, it occasionally featured some of the best sitcom writing on American television.

According to a Variety report, former showrunner Greg Daniels and his team have been working on a “new iteration” of the series since January of this year. It’ll be more of a companion piece than a reboot, and the publication also confirmed that Gleeson is currently “attached to the project” alongside the Emmy award-nominated Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore.

Are we a little sceptical about this announcement? Of course. Is an Office spin-off such a bad idea? Not necessarily, and not with that cast.

Impacciatore was superb as a snappy, short-tempered hotel manager in the second season of The White Lotus. Gleeson is very good at playing the sort of bumbling, befuddled eejits (see About Time, Alice & Jack) who wouldn’t look out of place on a comedy like The Office. Cast her as the boss and him as one of her frazzled employees and you might be on to a winner.

It will go one of two ways. Obviously, The Office comes with a built-in audience. If the new version works, everyone will tune in, and the series will be showered with rave reviews and shiny accolades. If it sucks, everyone involved will be punished for their efforts. That’s modern life, there is no in-between. Whatever happens, Gleeson will be great in it – he always is. Best of luck to him.