Today I finished The Office, the US version. I've seen the UK version a few times. When I saw the US version's first season, I was instantly turned off. The first episode was almost a word for word copy of the UK version's first episode and then the remaining episodes had a mix of word for word copies and weird concepts that weren't funny in the least. However, in pursuit of wanting some good background noise TV, I gave it another shot starting with the second season. The first several episodes of the second season were rough but then it started hitting its stride. I thought all of the seasons of the show were good with the exception of the eighth season. Even the ninth season seemed to mostly get its shit together even though the formula had clearly been used up at that point. Personally I thought ending it at the seventh season when Steve Carell left would have been the best time to end it. It seemed like in the 8th and 9th seasons, they kept trying to throw crazy curveballs to keep things fresh but all of them pretty much fell flat in my opinion. I'm sure everyone and their dog has seen this show but if not, it's good background noise TV.
I watched series 8 of Peep Show and man, that was not good. I really liked the earlier series and might get around to rewatching them sometime.
I watched all of the available episodes of Orange is the New Black and it was alright. I saw a ton of internet hype around it. At this point if the internet hypes something up, it usually means that it is pretty decent but not anything great. That was the case here. Nothing seemed to jump out at me as anything really compelling to watch but it wasn't bad either. In the Netflix originals scheme, I'd put it behind House of Cards and on par with the new season of Arrested Development.
