I caught the first two eps on Bravo over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised. As a huge fan of the BBC original, I had extremely low expectations, especially after the flat out disaster that was the US version of Coupling.
The biggest difference for me is that “Michael” is not nearly as horrible as David Brent — he’s funny and obviously a bad person, but he doesn’t make you quite as uncomfortable as Brent did on a regular basis. Perhaps this will improve in the future, but Brent had it down from the beginning. I do have to say, though, that most of the actors do a pretty good job with the subtle comedy. I haven’t really bought into the Gareth/Dwight character yet, but otherwise I like pretty much everyone.
“Diversity Day” was a nice touch — clearly took a page from the training day episode (my all time favorite), but didn’t follow it too closely. Gone was Brent on guitar, easily the funniest moments of the original show. Good for them though — if they had tried to duplicate the original, it never would have worked. They “Americanized” the concept well, bringing in a beautifully bad Chris Rock impression from Michael and some other quality inappropriate comments that US audiences should appreciate.
I doubt it will ever be as good as the BBC version, but I’m definitely going to keep watching.