NBC Trying To Remake 'The IT Crowd' Again

Before Chris O'Dowd was showing up in Judd Apatow movies and Richard Ayoade was being hailed as a fresh young voice in filmmaking, they were big in British TV as the hapless leads of The IT Crowd. Big enough, in fact, that an American remake of the series was commissioned by NBC in 2007, with Joel McHale playing the O'Dowd role and Ayoade remaining intact.

If you're a big fan of the original show, you likely know what happened next: A terrible pilot was shot but the series never got off the ground, to the relief of IT Crowd fans everywhere. But because everything old is new again, NBC is now going to try turning The IT Crowd back on again. This time with a little help from Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence. Get the latest on the IT Crowd remake after the jump.

Linehan's The IT Crowd centers around the three-person IT department of a major corporation. Roy (O'Dowd) and Moss (Ayoade) are consummate geeks, though they're pretty different from one another; Roy is a slovenly misanthrope while Moss is uptight and supremely awkward. The department is run by Jen (Katherine Parkinson), who bullshitted her way into the job and doesn't actually know the first thing about computers.

On the one hand, there's no reason to assume a remake can't succeed. As shows like The Office, Ugly Betty, and Homeland have shown, an American remake of a foreign program can definitely become its own delightful thing. On the other... I don't know, you guys, I'm still kind of reeling from the last time NBC tried an IT Crowd remake.