IT Crowd comes back for a fourth season!

Bill sez, "Den of Geeks is reporting that 'The IT Crowd' has been green-lit for a fourth season. Details are few and far between, but it looks like Moss, Roy, and Jen will be back for another 6 episodes."

Hurrah! What wonderful news!

IT Crowd and Peep Show get new series orders

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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deckard68

“I hate it when the brits make good shows, because they torture us by only doing six episodes at a time!”

I know! They’re so freaking lazy! And sometimes they can’t even get actors to commit to even those few episodes.
Anonymous

the only reason for the season only consisting of 6 episodes is because its written by one or two men and not a whole team of writers so deckard68 you can stop calling our genius writers hear in the UK lazy!!!! yeah i is well angry!!!!!!
Chris Tucker

@#23:

NBC already did, with Richard reprising his role as Moss.

Made one pilot episode. NOT picked up for a series.
bklynchris

please cover your ears….

WHAT DO YOU MEAN GREEN LIT FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!!!!!!!!
I saw that headline and thought, FINALLY, the season premiere. Greenlit? That should have been quite clear well before the last season ended (OK, maybe not quite). Nonetheless, why did we have to wait so long just to hear it was coming back?
taj

Perhaps “Denholm” could return as a long lost Evil Twin?
Er… eviler twin?

I love this show.
Anonymous

What happened to that one American pilot episode? Did it ever get shown to the public? Can we see it?
Anonymous

FYI. http://www.tv.com/the-it-crowd-uk/show/54188/series-4/topic/74500-1214126/msgs.html …
Anonymous

why DO the brits only do 6 at a time? i think they used to do 26 or whatever the normal amount is, then they started doing mini-series length seasons. any brits know why?
Vinicius

They are popular in the Brasil too.

I hope his back soon!!!!!!!!

sorry my english… My language is portuguese
elpajaronegro

Yay! Here’s hoping they can get Noel Fielding to make a couple of appearances as Richmond for series 4.
elpajaronegro

Oh, and people? It’s a MOOT point, not a MUTE point.
GaryG

Talking of Graham Linehan, he was in Charlie Brookers Gameswipe prog earlier this week; made some great points about the standard of writing/plotting in games.

Actually, anyone with the slighest interest in video games should watch it (iplayer in the uk…), undoubtedly the smartest/funniest prog about gaming ever.
Anonymous

ÑƒÑ€Ð° Ð° ÐºÐ¾Ð³Ð´Ð°?
Anonymous

YAY for more Peep Show too!
Anonymous

@#8: Anon

They only do 6 shows per season because the brits don’t have a huge capitalist infrastructure to support funding dozens of episodes per season… Their TV system is a strange socialized affair where they expect people to pay “license fees” for their television to support public broadcasting, which pays for shows to be created.. As I understand it few people actually pay for their license and the quality (or amount) of their programming seems to suffer.

Think of it like every station on the air was PBS, except instead of begging for donations every 20 minutes they relied on the honour system. Yeah.
- Anonymous
  
  Don’t kill me, I’ll go to any lengths to put off revision :p
  You’re right for the most part, about the tele licensing stuff, but the majority of us brits do pay the tv licensing fees. Also, some channels are free, because of the adverts, and that includes the channels that IT Crowd is shown on :)
Anonymous

I’m looking forward to more IT Crowd, and of course Peep Show. The only way I can keep up from the US is using bit torrent. I wouldn’t mind paying a small amount for downloaded TV shows, but am not aware of a way to do so and gain acceptable legal status for the download.
It’d be nice if BBC and other networks could make this possible.
deckard68

Well the BBC could make a few bucks by releasing season 2 of Peep Show in the US. Season 1 was great, and it is the only season on DVD in the US.

(I know, I could just pirate the rest, but that doesn’t excuse their lack of releasing DVDs).
Anonymous

Anon @#4, sounds like you have never watched the show. It was never really about technology, it was always more of a “buddy” show like “Seinfeld”.

And none of the IT staff dress in “a Gothic-hardmetal dress-code”. Only one ancillary character, Richmond (ok, a goth), who does not work in IT, but had his office moved into the server room dresses Goth. The character has only appeared in like, four episodes.

I’m so happy to hear that another season is on the way. I love the characters and am greatful to Graham for turning me on to Guided By Voices.
nosehat

Woo hoo, more Peep Show.

That’s what I’m carrying away from this one. =D
d3matt

I was doing a happy dance until I saw comment #1 :(

Any more recent news?
Bowlie

UK series only come six at a time because they are typically written by one single person, not a team of writers.

I just told my wife that The IT Crowd was coming back and her 16 year old American cousin goes “Yay, I love The IT Crowd” Apparently kids at her High School pass around AVI’s of the show. It was WAY more popular in the US than I ever imagined.

Go Graham!

Cheers Nigel
Anonymous

They also usually only have one or two writers per show, as opposed to the huge teams of writers most American TV shows have.
Anonymous

I read that season 4 will be back in January 2010 and there will be a Christmas special for 2009. Someone told me this in Digg a few weeks ago. I don’t know how accurate it is. :( –Ant
Chris Schmidt

BOWLIE:
There is a huge following of BBC material within the younger tech-savy population of American high school and colleges. In college, my particular group of friends and I probably watched more BBC material than US (No cable but decent broadband).

It’s really a shame that there is not a pay/ad-supported iPlayer available to people in the States, BBC America is pretty horrible (with a few notable exceptions) and BBC DVDs are incredibly overpriced.
Anonymous

Series 3 was hilarious! Matt Berry as Douglas is ingenious! “God DAMN these electric sex pants!” LOL!!! I want a picture of Berry on a shirt with that quote! Everyone on this show is hilarious but I’ve been a huge fan of Ayoade and Berry since Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Man to Man with Dean Learner. Why they can’t ship these series DVDs to the US I’ll never understand. This stuff is waaaay funnier than anything we have over here. Channel 4 tortures us Americans. Good to know that series 4 is on the way. Were it not for Netflix I’d not even see this stuff.
H&F Labs

Love The IT Crowd. I didn’t hate season 3, but I thought season 2 was better. Each season had a relatively mediocre episode, when compared to the other episodes, but season 3 also had “Calender Geeks,” the first truly mediocre episode (i.e. approaching Laverne and Shirley quality). While Jen’s speech on Dragons Den was my favorite gag (no pun intended), “The Diner Party” and “The Work Outing” are without peer.
Chinny Racoon

@10.
I’m not sure how you could be more wrong. The vast majority of people in the UK do pay their TV licence, which is purely used for the BBC (with the exception of the world service and BBC Arabic TV. The only other station to get funding from the licence fee is s4c, the Welsh language part of Channel 4.

The UK is not alone in the use of a Licence fee for Television broadcasts, much of Europe does too, alongside commercial broadcasters.

The reason the quality of the BBC programming has suffered in my opinion is due to the pressure from the commercial broadcasters- The Murdock scum I’m looking at you here- with constant attacks on the BBC and with the Tories looking like they will win the next election this will only continue at an accelerated rate. The BBC can produce fantastic programming, and it’s news quality is amongst some of the best there is.

Britsh series have always generally been the six episodes, as described by Bowlie above. Your point about the Licence fee is mute anyway as none of the licence fee is used by Channel 4 and has not been spent on the production of the IT crowd.

Is the system socialist? Not really. Is the BBC worth Â£150/yr? Hell yes.
Anonymous

The BBC won’t make any money from The IT Crowd/Peep Show because they are produced by Channel 4!
Anonymous

YAY! I need new episodes!
BengArp

Awesome.

I’m a bit surprised by the anti season 3 sentiments. I thought every season of the IT Crowd so far had been stronger then the previous.

The show is great, my only complaint is some weird underlying misogyny stuff that pops up occasionally.
Neill S Mitchell Esq.

To those a little confused about the UK broadcasting system, I suggest reading or listening to Stephen Fry’s Blessay on the subject. It is fantastic.
http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/06/18/the-bbc-and-the-future-of-broadcasting/
Anonymous

ALSO ARGENTINA !!!!
- Anonymous
  
  I’m from Slovakia, and I love IT Crowd too. Many of my friends here do as well;-)
mdh

Yeah, why DO they keep turning it off and back on again?

It’s brilliant!!!
Anonymous

hell yea!
blueelm

Yeah the show isn’t perfect I guess, but it’s funny to me since I work in IT (although I’m in management so… yeah). I’ve liked all the episodes I’ve seen although I only own seasons 1 and 2. I’m happy to hear there’s another season. The characters are great in this although you can add me to the greatly misses Denholm group. Richard Ayoade is freaking hilarious.
Johne Cook

They turned it off and on again.
Anonymous

bollocks if BBC is worth Â£150 a year. Biased and innacurate news and endless shows about minor celebrities skating on ice. Their heydey has long passed and the license fee should be scrapped. Virtually every decent comedy in recent years has been Channel 4 and good luck to them! Can’t wait for series 4!
Keir

I was puzzled by this story, until I noticed the Den Of Geek story was from March!
Bobby Spicer

You know what pisses me off, here in America if we get a good show they get to see it to! If they get a good quality funny ass show, its fuck us! I hate our tv stations apparently they think that us Americans might go insane if we hear a non american accent on tv or something like our heads will blow up! Its really starting to piss me off! Their is like 8 shows that I have found that should be playing here in the states but its not instead our stations love to keep rerunning the same dumb ass shit over and fucking over!!! common man some one make a cable stations with nothing but the best British tv shows!! Trust me its a good idea, and I’m not talking about the BBC shit ether! no offence.. But to us it will all be new and it would get allot of viewers since its not a rerun in away and it would be new to us! Their tv shows are such high quality, i mean we have good oens to but we have tons of crap to… its like they work on making one really good show and then air it a little, here we make crap shows until we find one that works and then we milk it until we ruin it and they have killed it!!! If they get to see all of our shows we should have some stations running all of their shows, its only fair!!!!
Bouncy Bouncy

Meh. Season 3 was rather limp.
- Anonymous
  
  I believe you’re projecting your own limpness, sort of limpness by proxy. Season 3 was great.
- Anonymous
  
  Season 3 was classic! It had Jen’s Internet speech. BluffBall, and the Facebook parody! Season 3 was awesome.
Lex10

Both shows outclass all the “According to Dad’s Rules” sitcom’ here, But out of the two, Peep Show’s the real thrill.

I want Richmond!
Anonymous

I’m an American who has seen every episode of the IT Crowd… Quite a number of times, each… I just find British humor funny (accent and all), and (in particular) enjoy this one-and-only Comedy show that has Technology as something of a “theme” (I work in IT, so there’s the draw)… Excited to hear that Season 4 may be coming… Don’t shoot me, but I thought Denim (sp?) was a lot funnier than Douglas as “Mr. Big” at Renholm Industries… I wish they’d find a way to raise him from the dead and put his eccentric arse back in the CEO’s office…
pupdog

Linehan’s made a few references on his Twitter feed to plotting/writing the new episodes over the last couple weeks. I’ll watch whatever comes out when they’re ready. Even a less-than-stellar ep. has its great moments.
Anonymous

Is January now – where is Season 4? :)
DWittSF

I can’t wait until they make an American version with Seth Rogen and Justin Long, or whoever.

Just kidding, but you know it’s going to happen.
Anonymous

I hate it when the brits make good shows, because they torture us by only doing six episodes at a time!
Anonymous

What BOUNCY BOUNCY said. Also the news that this news isn’t all that new gives me a number of doubts… Hope if there is a forth series it steers clear of that tabloid knee-jerk attitude to modern technology that the third series had. Or, at least, really rips the piss out of stereotypical knee-jerk reactions to people in information technology… Having said that, I could never understand why IT employees had to correspond to a Gothic-hardmetal dress-code…
IanUltra

Season 3 is def not the best season but funny nonetheless. Looking forward to season 4.
Anonymous

I can understand doing six episodes for something like Hustle, as they are an hour long each (Yes actually an hour because it’s on BBC) but six episodes for such an awesome show like the IT crowd or Peep show takes the piss to be honest. Compare it to Heroes for example. They have had series with like 22 episodes in them of an hour each (Well these actually are about 40 minutes or so). The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother also have series of over 20 episodes in length that go on for the same length of time as Peep Show and the IT Crowd. Sorry for the rant but I had to get that one off my chest :)
Anonymous

you can see the office where I work in the background shots for the IT crowd – e.g. when Moss is pointing out the window to disract everyone from roy under the desk…

and in my last job, I worked in an office in Slough, which is visible in the opening shots of ‘The Office’.

Is there a pattern developing here ? Is the universe trying to tell me something ?
Anonymous

Very happy it’s coming back.
@28 Quite enjoyed the Gameswipe program! And Charlie on ‘Would I Lie To You?’.
The reason why only a few episodes are made is due to QUALITY over QUANTITY. Also, perhaps there simply wasn’t enough material to cover that many episodes. One can only churn out so much that is worth putting money into/filming.
Anonymous

I agree with the quantity not quality theory about UK comedies.
Also, if you like Peep Show, they have made 6 series so you might want to bit torrent dat sheet…
Anonymous

Filming for the fourth series starts in March of this year.