The Office Could Be Coming Back To Television, But There's A Catch

If your ultimate holiday wish was for your favourite long-gone sitcoms to churn out new episodes, NBC could make it happen. Not long after releasing new episodes of Will & Grace, the network is reportedly considering breathing new life into a certain iconic workplace comedy as well.

According to TVLine, NBC may bring back The Office, which ended its nine-season run in 2013. The new series, should it happen, will reportedly take fans back to the grey offices of Dunder Mifflin, and feature both new faces as well as former cast members.

If you're wondering how this revival will work in Michael Scott, it looks like... it won't. Per TVLine, Steve Carell, who portrayed the very quotable boss, is not slated to return to the sitcom, should it happen. That makes sense: These days, the actor is very busy collecting nominations for his big screen roles, which this year includes his turn as tennis player Bobby Riggs in Battle of the Sexes.

No word yet on whether stars like Jenna Fischer or John Krasinski, who gave us all #CoupleGoals as Pam and Jim, will return. However, if they return as anything less than the oh-so-in-love married pair we left them as, the fandom will surely lose it.

Per the report, the show could hit the air as soon as the 2018-2019 season. That barely gives you enough time to binge the entire original series before the revival's potential airdate. (That's not even including the British version of the show, which starred Ricky Gervais.)

The past few years have been huge for revivals, with shows like Gilmore Girls, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files receiving new life on the small screen. As exciting as it is to hear that fans will receive more of the shows they once loved, it's hard to go into any one of these shows without a tiny bit of skepticism. Will the revival really be able to recapture that same TV magic? There's certainly more pressure on a revival to get things right than, say, on the first season of a brand-new series.

For The Office, specifically, it's hard to see how it will connect with audiences without the majority of its original cast. Back when the series started in 2005, stars like Carell weren't household names. Now, even supporting players on the series, like Craig Robinson, who portrayed Darryl, and Mindy Kaling, who portrayed Kelly, are sitcom stars in their own right, with multiple projects in the works. It seems unlikely some of the show's bigger names would return to a revival. If the new season fails to secure the comedians who helped make it worth reviving, it will have to bank on finding a cast that makes fans of the original series laugh just as hard.

Still, The Office was great once, and can be must-watch TV again. Hopefully, should the revival move forward, it does so because there's something special to work with — whether any of the original cast returns or not.