Steve Carell's 17-Part The Office Replacement Deserved One More Season From Netflix
More than a decade after it went off the air, The Office remains one of the most popular shows on streaming. The streamers keep dangling potential replacements in front of their subscribers — Netflix made its own workplace show set in a Blockbuster; Peacock spun off The Office into The Paper — but they keep coming back to the comfort food that is The Office.
While the British original captured the mundanity of a fluorescent-lit workplace with wry cynicism, the American remake feels like a warm blanket. There’s nothing quite as soothing as following Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute on a zany misadventure for the 100th time.
The biggest draw in The Office is Steve Carell. The entire ensemble is a murderer’s row, and the writing is razor-sharp, but it’s really Carell’s performance — not just his pitch-perfect comic timing, but also the warmth and vulnerability that he brought to the character — that makes the show work so well. There’s a reason the first seven seasons with Carell get rewatched a lot more than the last two seasons without him.
Netflix recognized that and came up with the novel idea to cast Carell in a new workplace sitcom. But, ultimately, Space Force failed to recapture the success of The Office. And it’s a shame, because it was just getting good in that last season.
It Wasn't Stellar, But Space Force Was Slowly Lifting Off
In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the United States Armed Forces established its sixth branch: the United States Space Force. Despite the fact that America was facing no tangible threats from outer space, the government dedicated time and resources and billions of dollars to establishing a futuristic Starfleet-like military organization that would police the cosmos and defend Earth from alien invasions.
Carell and his Office co-creator Greg Daniels saw a ripe opportunity for satire in this concept, and came up with a sitcom about the decorated generals who would be tasked with getting “boots on the Moon,” per the president’s orders. In mid-2020, just a few short months after the real Space Force was established, Space Force premiered to mixed reviews on Netflix.
Space Force had everything going for it. It had a timely satirical premise, it had the creator and star of one of the best workplace shows making a new workplace show, and it had a stacked cast. Carell leads the charge, but he’s backed up by similarly iconic supporting players like John Malkovich and Noah Emmerich. Space Force is a who’s-who of comedy talent: Jane Lynch, Diedrich Bader, Patrick Warburton, Tim Meadows, Fred Willard, Lisa Kudrow, Kaitlin Olson, Jimmy O. Yang, Patton Oswalt, Ben Schwartz.
But despite all that talent, Space Force’s first season was pretty so-so. But that was the case with The Office, too. The writers recognized the mistakes of a weak first season, started to rectify those mistakes in season 2, and got the show back on track in time for season 3. But, unlike The Office, Space Force never made it to season 3; it was cancelled after season 2.
Space Force's Timing Couldn't Have Been More Perfect
The development cycle at Hollywood studios takes so interminably long that they rarely strike while the iron is hot. The biggest Gen Alpha I.P. of 2026 (whatever that may be) likely won’t get turned into a movie until 2032, by which point it’ll seem incredibly dated.
But with Space Force, Netflix managed to time the satire pretty well. The series was announced a couple of months after Trump announced the Space Force (maybe the only cool thing he’s ever done), and it premiered just a couple of months after the real Space Force was established. It’s a rare case where the timing of the satire is much better than the satire itself.