Characters In Television

The IT Crowd (click for video) is a comedy made in the UK which follows the exploits and daily tedium of a billion-dollar corporation's absurdly small and completely under-appreciated IT department composed of just three people: Roy, a computer expert from Ireland, and Moss, a socially dysfunctional genius who can operate any piece of technology, but is painfully unable to function in everyday society. Finally, these two close friends are kept in check by Jen Barber, who holds (to her dismay) the IT department's third (and arbitrary) position as Relationship Manager.

The three share very similar cultural values, which are much what one would expect from an English show. The differences come at a personal level. Roy plays the average slob with a heavy sense of enmity and disrespect for anyone who works at a level higher than the IT department's crowded basement. He views almost everyone at the company besides Moss and himself as utterly helpless when it comes to computers, even going so far as to answer the phone with the phrase "Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?" in a bored and exasperated voice each time it rings. Roy shares the limelight of the show fairly evenly with Moss and Jen, and exists as a foil to Jen's technologically incompetent and hard-working ways, and vice-versa. He is also very close friends with Moss, and supports him whenever he can, as seen in the given clip.

Jen is in the IT department purely because she lied on her resume about having experience with computers and various other forms of technology in order to get hired at the company, expecting her personality and other qualifications to place her somewhere in middle management. Instead, she is now in the IT department where she worries consistently about her career advancement and the nigh-complete lack of work done by Roy and Moss on a day-to-day basis. She views her work as being one of the most important things in her life, whereas Moss and Roy hold a polar opposite view of their occupations. Because of these differences in personality, she holds a strange and complex relationship with the two, calling them "Friends... but in a special way that means... you can't come into my house"

Moss is made of contradictions. He is very socially awkward, although by nature he is very polite and courteous. He possesses a high level of natural skill when it comes to extremely complex electronics, but lacks a basic knowledge of self-reliant behavior (he still lives with his mother, depending on her to cook and clean for him). Moss loves order on an obsessive-compulsive level, needing to know at all times how many staples he has left. However, this really only extends so far, at which point it drops off completely. In the first episode, he has a nest of baby birds living in the open disk tray of his computer stating that "I don't know how they got there, but I don't have the heart to put them out, Jen" and letting the room which he and Roy occupy during work hours fall into an utter state of disrepair. He is in his mid-to-late twenties, as are Jen and Roy.

These three, as a team, play the role of heroes in almost all of the show's conflicts, commonly ignored and let down by a faceless company. They largely envy the lifestyle of the people who work on the floors above the basement because the company is comprised of, as the CEO puts it "Attractive people not doing much work... all having affairs." Their greatest triumphs typically go unnoticed by anyone outside the three, and their contributions to the company go completely unappreciated. They exist as the company's absolute bottom rung socially, with the exception of Jen, who is treated with a civility and respect not usually extended to Moss and Roy.

Bonus Clip: Roy and Moss tries to come up with an intentionally off-putting personal ad to prove the point to Jen that "women love ba****ds"