General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Office (2019 TV series)

The Office is an Indian Hindi-language mockumentary sitcom adapted from the British series The Office, first streamed on Hotstar on June 28, 2019.¹ It transposes the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company of Scranton, Pennsylvania into the Wilkins Chawla Paper Company of Faridabad, Haryana, and follows the staff of that branch and their boss, Jagdeep Chadda, played by Mukul Chadda.² The series ran for two seasons.³

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	June 28, 2019, on Hotstar, as part of its Hotstar VIP platform¹^•⁴
Format	Hindi-language workplace mockumentary, 22-minute episodes¹
Setting	Wilkins Chawla Paper Company, Faridabad, Haryana²
Creative team	Created by Rajesh Devraj; directed by Debbie Rao, Rohan Sippy, and Vivek Bhushan⁵
Production	Applause Entertainment Ltd., its fourth adapted web series¹^•⁶
Run	Two seasons; season 2 first aired September 15, 2019³
Reception	IMDb 5.7/10 from about 4,200 users (unweighted mean 7.8); The Indian Express gave 1.5 of 5 stars⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series is a slice-of-life mockumentary about the daily work of a group of office employees, filmed in the documentary style of the original franchise. The Wilkins Chawla Paper Company's Faridabad branch was dressed to resemble Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch, a detail one reviewer described as a carbon copy.²^•⁹

The central characters map onto the American cast. Mukul Chadda plays Jagdeep Chadda, the boss corresponding to Michael Scott, a former salesman who worked his way up to head the regional branch and calls himself a "funjabi".²^•⁸ Gopal Datt plays Triveni Prasad (TP) Mishra, the Dwight Schrute counterpart, an eccentric, self-righteous salesman who speaks shuddh Hindi.²^•⁸ Sayandeep Sengupta plays Amit Sharma, the prankster-salesman in the Jim Halpert role, and Samridhi Dewan plays Pammi, the receptionist corresponding to Pam.²^•¹⁰ The ensemble also includes Gauahar Khan as Riya Pahwa, Mallika Dua as Kitty Kataria, Abhinav Sharma as Sapan Gill, Mayur Bansiwal as the HR manager Madhukar, and Nehpal Gautam as Bhadoria, the office peon who treats making tea as an art.²^•⁸

Place in the franchise

The Indian version belongs to an international format lineage that began with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's British original of 2001. Reviewers noted that fan resistance to remakes is a pattern: when the UK version was adapted for the US, British fans wrote to the BBC that "the original cannot be re-made", yet the US series ran nine seasons against the British original's two.¹³ The Week argued that the Indian series could only succeed by declaring independence from the American script, and observed that the French adaptation, Le Bureau, had flopped for being a far-too-British transposition into a Parisian context.¹³

Production and release

Applause Entertainment produced the series as its fourth adapted web series, after Criminal Justice (from the British crime drama of the same name), Hostages (a remake of the Israeli thriller Bnei Aruba), and Mind the Malhotras (based on Israel's La Famiglia).⁶ Rajesh Devraj created the show, with Debbie Rao, Rohan Sippy, and Vivek Bhushan directing; Rao had earlier directed Better Life Foundation (2016), a five-episode YouTube web series influenced by The Office and Parks and Recreation.⁵^•¹¹ The first season of 13 episodes premiered on Hotstar on June 28, 2019, on the Hotstar VIP platform.¹²^•⁴ According to India Today, it was the tenth adaptation of The Office since the British version, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, first aired in 2001.¹² A second season followed, first airing on September 15, 2019.³

Reception

Critical response was largely negative. The Indian Express rated the first season 1.5 out of 5, calling the show "almost a frame-to-frame, scene-to-scene and at times a dialogue-to-dialogue copy of the American one" that was "neither an honest homage, nor does it serve as a faithful copy"; its reviewer singled out Gopal Datt's TP Mishra as the one performance that really shone.⁸ The New Indian Express credited the production with attention to detail but found that replicating every episode scene by scene does not leave much room for creativity and leads to repetition, and that translated jokes and anecdotes are often lost in translation.⁹ Raja Sen, a film critic and the author of The Best Baker In The World (2017), writing in Mint Lounge, judged the first season "decent, if unspectacular", noting that its 13 episodes faithfully mirror the first season and a half of the American version.⁵

A recurring criticism was the handling of signature jokes. The Indian Express asked how the punchline "that's what she said" could translate to "baby bhi yah boli"; The Week similarly described the first season as a re-staged, Hindi-translated version whose gags, such as the stapler prank, were translated and reused.⁸^•¹³ The Print later described the series, which it credited to Rajesh Devraj, as having created 27 episodes "peppered with redundant stereotypes" and predicted it would be remembered "as a laughing stock, and for not the right reasons".¹¹

Audience measures were middling. IMDb records a rating of 5.7/10 from about 4,200 users, with an unweighted mean of 7.8; per-episode ratings in the first season ranged from 4.9 to 6.9, and in the second season from 6.4 to 8.2, with the second season rated higher throughout.⁷ The Screenwise parent-review service gave the show a 52% WISE score, judging it safe workplace-sitcom fare best suited to viewers 13 and older, but derivative of its source material.¹⁴ The series received 3 wins and 5 nominations in total, according to IMDb.¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026