The ending of the BBC 'mockumentary' sitcom, The Office (2001–03) was suitably cathartic. Its supporting protagonists, Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman) and Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis), walked off into the sunset hand in hand to Yazoo's synth love-ballad 'Only You', and its central character David Brent (Ricky Gervais) – the deluded middle-manager of fictional paper company Wernham–Hogg – found a glimmer of salvation in a woman who could stand him. He even summoned the courage to tell the bullying office chauvinist 'Finchy' to 'fuck off'. So resonant were the triumphs of The Office's everymen (and everywoman), and so well-rounded were their story arcs that Gervais, the show's co-creator – with Stephen Merchant – firmly rejected the notion of a third series after the Christmas Specials: 'There's not even a part of me that thinks, "I wonder if we can do another one". We just mustn't.'