Follow TV Tropes

Following

Funny / The IT Crowd

Go To

Series 1

  • Jen lamely trying to convince Denholm that she has experience with computers...which winds up working. Even after he has to remind her what the hard drive is called.
  • Hello Computer. Hello Computer. Hello Computer...
  • Jen has a long, fake conversation on her office phone in front of Moss...who's come to see if she'd like him to connect her phone.
    • She then persists in her lie, claiming to have been talking to the boss the whole time.
      Moss: (picks up the clearly disconnected) phone, turning it over) But how?!
  • The photo montage of Moss and Roy and their day at the fair with a couple of prostitutes.
  • The new emergency services number: 0118 999 881 999 119 725 (Beat) 3.
    • And then Moss, without missing a beat, repeating it flawlessly!
    • Moss trying to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. Being "made in Britain", it catches fire.
      Moss: I'll just put this over here with the rest of the fire.
    • Moss sending an e-mail to the fire department because he can't remember the number. Made funnier by him saying "exclamation mark" aloud as he types.
      "Fire! Fire! Help me! 123 Cavendon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you. Yours truly, Maurice Moss."
      For one final bit of hilarity, the episode ends with the Fire Department arriving, saying that they got his email.
    • Then there's his first, overly formal effort.
      "Subject: Fire. Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to inform you of a fire that has broken out on the premises of 123 Cavendon Road... Nope, that's way too formal."
    • Denholm comes down and sees the fire still burning behind a broken monitor frame.
      Denholm: Nice screensaver!
    • He sees it a second time, admiring how the flames rise above the screen.
    • Why didn't Jen get fired? The stress machine was Made in Britain.
  • Jen trying on shoes three sizes too small mangles her feet so badly that her toes become crossed.
    • After Jen ruined the merger after her Cluster F-Bomb, Denholm's saving grace was that her swearing was bleeped out by the profanity filter button. Paul, who was quick to react and promoted back on the payroll, came in too late on Denholm's Precision F-Strike.
  • It loses some humour in writing, but in "Fifty-Fifty," Jen, Moss, and Roy are having a conversation—just before, Roy had asked Moss' opinion on a pair of sunglasses he was trying on. Every time the camera switches back to Roy, he's wearing a different pair of sunglasses.
  • The morning after in Aunt Irma Visits, where Jen wakes up next to Moss, Roy with the psychiatrist who looks like his mother and Denholm with Richmond.
    • Jen's "demon" makeup and hairdo in the same episode.
  • "Here we are. Your place... your place. La Maison de la femme, El casa de las senorita... DAS HAUSE DIE FRAU!"
  • Roy tries to prove to Jen that women only want bastards, so he and Moss create some overly aggressive dating profiles, with Moss going a bit overboard with his:
    Moss: (reading) I'm going to murder you! You bloody woman!
    Roy: You might be playing a bit too hard to get.
    • Then there's the following conversation:
      Moss: If you were a murderer, what would your nickname be? Mine would be The Gardener, because I'd always leave a rose at the scene of the crime.
      Roy: What would your murder weapon be?
      Moss: (beat) A hammer.
    • Roy's "greaser" getup that he dons to make himself look like a bastard on his date, as well as the overly gruff voice he uses.
    • Then there's the restaurant Moss recommends to both Jen and Roy for their dates, Messy Joe's (which he pronounces as "Messeejo's"), which is "London's best family restaurant", complete with screaming kids and entertainment in the form of clowns and a mariachi band.
      • The clown laughing at Jen's date after Jen cost her date £31,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, resulting in him beating the snot out of the clown with his own clown-shoe.
  • HELLO COMPUTER! COMPUTER! HELLO COMPUTER!!
  • Moss and Roy getting PMS.
  • Roy goes in to plug in a computer and... gets stuck under the ladies' desk when they come back.
    • And he texted the distress call so nobody would hear him!
      Moss: Roy's stuck under a desk.
      Jen: Roy's stuck under a desk?
      Moss: Yes, it's not just me, it is an unusual text, isn't it?
  • "STOP TELLING PEOPLE I SLEPT WITH YOU! YOU... BASTARD!!!!"
  • "Why are you giving me the secret signal to shut up?"

Series 2

  • ''The Work Outing" in itself is one long CMOF. There's no filler, every line in the entire 24 minute episode is used to either setup a joke, sight gag or to deliver a punchline.
    • Roy starts by winning a month's rent playing online poker, talks about how he's going to buy that.... and he's lost it all immediately.
    • When Phillip tries to ask Jen out on a date, both Moss and Roy immediately interrupt him to Jen's consternation.
    • When Phillip comes back to borrow the Heat magazine, which makes Roy suspect he might be gay, Moss comes in saying "yes he is gay, and he has been gay, since Wham!"
    • Moss answering Jen's question about why would Phillip ask him out with "Don't take this the wrong way, could he have thought you were a man."
    • "Oh look, Richmond's still alive!"
      • "Where's my Heat?"
    • "Oh no, it's set in the 80's!"
    • Roy uses a toilet for disabled people and accidentally pulls the emergency cord. He cannot explain it, and all he can say is "I'm disabled!" and make things up as to how it happened.
    • "He's had a rough night. Somebody stole his wheelchair."
    • The "Could he have thought you were a man?" Brick Joke.
    • Jen turning around and seeing Moss behind the bar.
    • Moss repeatedly breaking glasses at the bar.
    • "Hooooooold my haaaaaand." "No . . . That's not my hand."
    • The gay musical called Gay. All of it.
    • ”Ok. I'm completely satisfied.”
    • The blurbs for the musical, which include "The audience applauded", "More than tolerable" and "Not as long as some musicals."
    • The Overly Long Gag of Roy going up and down the wheelchair lift.
    • Roy running into the actor from earlier during the after-party. The latter correctly assumes Roy is faking it, but expresses it through an insulting Irish accent, and dumps the guy next to Roy out of his wheelchair.
    • Roy being hit on by a man in the bus back to Manchester, and everyone doing a sing-along of the musical's songs.
      • “Willies! Willies! I love willies!”
    • The slight Bait-and-Switch when Moss describes the musical as "inSANEly brilliant."
    • The Brick Joke that ends the show, with Phillip telling Jen he thought they could make it work because Jen "looks a bit like a man".
    • As the end credits roll, we discover that Moss has apparently bonded with the entire theatre staff to the degree that it's like he's been working there for years.
      Moss: Night Millie. You be good!
      Millie: Not if I can help it!
  • The eulogy given during "Return of the Golden Child".
    • When Roy is talking about his phone, he accidentally calls his mother. If you listen, you can hear her asking "Hello?" in a voice that sounds suspiciously like Roy talking in a falsetto.
    • Roy's "heart attack".
      • The funniest part is that Roy, worrying he's going to die thanks to Moss's internet test, gets more and more frightened as the priest at the funeral repeats the phrase "Death is calling!", only for his phone (with a juiced-up vibration, again thanks to Moss) goes off in his breast pocket. And who was calling? Richmond, his face made up like a death's-head mask. Death really was calling him!
    • Moss delivering a rant to the office after someone disables the firewall:
      Moss: Thank you, some attention please. I know you don't think it's "important" or "cool" but there is a ruddy good reason why we put up anti-virus software and firewalls. It's because there are a lot of dangerous things out there.
    • Cue Denholm falling past the window behind him and people in the office freaking out. Soon afterwards, Moss comes back downstairs, still ranting about the firewall, only to be interrupted by Jen telling them that Denholm's dead. Moss, with no change in tone at all, adds, "Oh yes, and Denholm's dead."
    • The suicide itself deserves mention due to its absolute casualness. As soon as Denholm's told the police are there, he calmly instructs his assistant to make them some tea, then just walks to the window without pause and flings himself out with a tiny hop before anyone can even realize what the hell is happening.
    • Moss offering Denholm's widow a pen at the funeral.
    • Roy Comically Missing the Point at the funeral:
      Jen: Just say you're sorry and move on.
      Roy: [to Denholm's widow] Sorry for your loss. Move on.
    • The headshot of Denholm making an awkward sad face next to his casket.
    • Derek attempts to scold Roy and Moss for laughing and playing with Roy's souped up phone just before attending Denholm's funeral:
      Derek: You do know we are burying a great man today?!
      Roy: What, did someone else die?
      Derek: I MEAN MR. REYNHOLM!
  • Douglas's entrance to the funeral (and possibly the greatest entrance of a character EVER!)
    Fa-THEEER!
    Speak, priest!
    Quiet, woman!
  • In "Moss and the German", Jen and the other smokers attempt to fight against the company's restrictions on smoking, culminating in their being banished to an area far beyond the company property, which leads to a hilariously over-dramatic montage of Jen and Yorg making a long trek to the new smoking area, framed as if they were the protagonists in a brutal Stalin-era Soviet drama about the horrors of the gulags, with Jen collapsing along the way and having to be carried by Yorg. After seeing the pathetic new smoking area, Jen decides to quit again.
    Jen: I am too tired for revolution. And we've walked for fucking miles.
    • From the same episode, the entire Running Gag of Roy trying desperately to watch a movie without anyone spoiling it for him. At the end, he's so desperate that he slaps the police officer who's interrogating him for nearly doing so by accident!
    • The "really mean" anti-piracy ad.
      "You wouldn't shoot a policeman, and then steal his helmet! You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet, and then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again!"
    • Moss calling Johann a "fine young cannibal" is funny. Hearing the audience audibly groan is hysterical.note 
    • Johann's doorbell rings to the tune of "Chicken Dance".
    • Even cannibals have standards:
      Johann: [As the DVD anti-piracy video starts; in disgust] Oh, these piracy warnings!
  • Moss trying to start a bra company and going on Dragons' Den.
    Jen: My tits! My tits are on fire!
  • Richmond saying "Bloody hell, I think this is my one", after being introduced to Jessica at Jen's dinner party. The two end up getting on pretty well, culminating in:
    Jessica: Oh! Look at me, "having an orgasm"!
    • "Memory IS RAM! Oh DEAR!"
    • "Who's a paedophile?"
    • This:
      Jen: What are you doing?!
      Roy: Well, um... not that it's any of your business, but I was planning to have a little poo.
    • Over the course of a two-hour dinner party, Moss and the woman he's partnered up with seem to go through a twenty-year marriage by way of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
      Moss: You're embarrassing yourself!
      Margaret: Oh, look at him! He's a delicate flower!
      Moss: You are drunk!
      Margaret: Well, if you paid a little more attention to me!
      Moss: Oh, tell us, Margaret, tell us all! How could we possibly pay more attention to you?!
      Margaret: You've changed. You're not the same man I liked when I came into the party.
      Moss: [Bitterly] We've all changed, Margaret. We all have. [Angrily smokes a cigarette]
  • Moss' last invention was a ladder to help moths escape from the bath.
  • "Damn that sorcerer! Twenty gold pieces and I'm wankered on Rohypnol!"
  • The entire scene with the 'sorcerer', played by Graham Linehan:
    • "She awakens a mighty tiger behind my fly!"
  • This:
    Douglas: Good God.
    Jen: Mr Reynholm?
    Douglas: You looked exactly like Melissa there.
    Jen: Melissa?
    Douglas: My wife. She died.
    Jen: Oh, poor you. That's terrible.
    Douglas: There's not a day goes past that I don't think of her. I'll never forget our final moments.
    Woman's voice in Douglas' head: Help me! My husband's trying to kill me!

Series 3

  • "Dem glasses is shit, innit?".
    • "It's too real, Roy! It's too real!"
  • Moss getting back at the bullies in "From Hell"
    Moss: *waving a gun around while running* I've got a gun! I've got a ruddy gun!
    • Douglas finds the aforementioned gun in his desk:
      "I don't think I've ever looked in this drawer". (opens drawer) "Wow! A gun!"
      "I wonder if it's loaded?" (Puts gun in mouth and pulls trigger ''five times'') "Nope"
    • Then finding the note left by his father. "If you're reading this then you've probably found my father's old service revolver. note  I did plan on using this gun to take my own life if it ever came to it, but, as you know, in the end, I jumped out of a window."
    • "Your loving father, Mr. Reynholm."
    • Note that moments before finding the gun, Douglas had been told he needed to stay out of trouble before a conference call the next morning, and that he should just stay in the office.
  • "Are We Not Men?" which gives us the longest Fake-Out Make-Out in human history... between Roy and Moss, in order to hide from passing police cars (of which there are far too many), instead of using a collection of huge bins nearby as cover.
    • Their all-purpose football dialogue.
      • Roy had just been shellshocked from finding out his new friends were robbers and blubbers, "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"
    • Jen's magician boyfriend.
  • "Tramps Like Us", where it starts with Roy getting coffee spilled on him and Moss getting concussed and ends with a nun, a priest, a rabbi and Douglas's electric sex pants. Moss goes to his happy place...
    • To clarify that last one, Douglas has been court-ordered to wear something to prevent him getting aroused. They begin shocking him all the time.
      Douglas: GOD DAMN THESE ELECTRIC SEX PANTS!
      Douglas: They feel like being tased in the balls. Except painful.
    • Moss recovers from concussion after an electric shock from said pants, and wakes up to the Windows start-up sound.
    • Roy's reunion with Jen after a shirtless Roy had been thrown out of the building. "It was the worst two hours of my life!"
    • When Douglas is caught by the aforementioned nun, priest, and rabbi with his pants literally down and Moss working on them, instead of even trying to explain himself he just yells at them to "FUCK OFF!"
  • Douglas first meeting and wooing his would-be girlfriend when she comes to interview him. He shows her a "caricature" he's done of her... which turns out to be a stick figure with two gigantic boobs. Then, after he's learned that she's a post-op trans woman, he sorrowfully takes the drawing and adds a mustache to it.
    • One joke that's sadly lost on non-English viewers: when she asks him who his favorite popular figure is, he tells her "Churchill." No, not the former Prime Minister, the cute little bulldog from the insurance advertisements.
      "I like the way he says 'Ohh, yes.'"
  • Moss's delivery of probably the single most awesomely cheesy one-liner not to appear in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
    "You'd better put seat belts on your ears, Roy, because I'm about to take them for the ride of their lives!"
  • In "The Speech", the boys have convinced Jen that "the Internet" is a small box with an LED on top. Roy initially acts hostile to the idea of her borrowing it - "What's Jen doing with the Internet?" - but comes round after Moss assures him that it's been completely "demagnetised" by Stephen Hawking himself.
    • "Well, if it's okay with The Hawk..."
    • "C'mon, boys, the Elders of the Internet? The Elders of the Internet know who I am?!"
    • In the same episode, Douglas's knuckle-down action movie-style fight with his trans ex-girlfriend, which revels in being as wrong and offensive as possible until you have no choice but to find it funny. In his defense, she started it... by punching him so hard he went straight into a glass cabinet.
      • "It's not you, it's me. No, actually, it's not me, it is you."
      • And then it intersects with the other plot when the two break the "internet", causing a panic among the shareholders.
      • Before that, Moss and Roy are giddily waiting for Jen to make a fool of herself during her presentation of "the internet" at the shareholders meeting... only to be disappointed when they discover that the shareholders are all just as computer illiterate as she is and eat the whole thing up.
      • When "the Internet" falls to the floor and breaks, Moss and Roy are the only ones not panicking (or locked in a fistfight). They look around at the chaos in the room and—without changing expression or saying a word—stoically fistbump one another
  • The end of "Friendface", where a series of events involving Jen pretending to have a husband to impress an old classmate at a reunion and Roy trying to get out of a date with an old girlfriend who has trouble letting him go collides together, with Jen, Moss and Roy somehow ending up acting out an impromptu romantic confrontation straight from a soap opera in front of Jen's entire reunion.
  • From the episode "Calendar Geeks":
    Jen: What kind of man would want to take pictures of beautiful women with their clothes off?!
    Roy: The kind of man who wants to help people, Jen!

Series 4

  • EIFFEL TOWER!
  • After a bad breakup, Roy photoshops his girlfriend out of all of their pictures together...including them on a tandem bike, a children's see-saw and a host of other situations that look plain weird with only one person.
    Moss: It's like someone broke up with Stalin!
  • In "Jen the Fredo", Jen works Roy like a pimp working a nervous prostitute in order to keep him from leaving the role-playing game.
  • The company bigwigs playing Dungeons & Dragons with all the mannerisms of a gambling session down to one of the players blowing on the dice before rolling.
  • At the start of the episode, Moss tests the ambient music for his game on Jen, playing an ethereal-sounding track to her, which she says is "fairly mysterious". Moss states that he was going for "ruddy mysterious. At the end of the episode, he plays the track for the executives (and Roy), all of whom start looking around the room, before one of them says "That's ruddy mysterious".
  • Tnetennba
  • Five words: a fire at Sea Parks. The entire b-plot of Roy's obsession with finding out exactly how the hell someone could die in a fire at a Sea Parks of all places is easily one of the funniest bits in the whole show.
    • There's a moment of perfectly placed awkwardness after Roy reveals that his girlfriend's parents died at a Sea Parks where Moss and Jen — equally confused as Roy — try to find out more details while simultaneously trying not to step on any toes.
    Moss: (long Beat) A fire?
    Roy: That's right. At the sea lion show, apparently.
    Jen: Aren't those shows usually out in the open?
    Roy: Well, yeah. Yeah, that's what I would've... yeah.
    Jen: Lots of water everywhere.
    Roy: Yeah, I mean, I would imagine the whales need a lot of water. I don't think you can have whales in a place where there isn't a huge amount of water!
    Jen: It just seems like a weird place to go on fire.
    Roy: (Almost sounding relieved that he's not crazy) It's a very weird place to go on fire!
    • Roy then tries to rationalise it by suggesting the fire could have been caused by plastic seats. Moss shoots this down:
      Moss: Roy, when I was on holiday, I lived at Sea Parks! It's the funnest, wettest, most splish-splashy place in the world!
      Roy: Okay, did you go and see the sea lion show?
      Moss: Three times a day for two weeks!
      Roy: And did they have pla-
      Moss: No, it's all stone steps.
      Roy: Then what went on fire?!
    • Roy's reaction when Jen asks if Julia might be lying. "Why would she lie? And if she was going to lie, why would she use this one? A fire at a Sea Parks?! It's wrecking my head! I mean if... if she had said that her parents had drowned I'd be the happiest man in the world! But a fire?! At a Sea Parks?!"
    • This exchange when Roy's girlfriend catches him researching this on her laptop.
      Julia: What are you doing?
      (Several beats)
      Roy: Masturbating.
      • The relief on Roy's face that she thinks he's using her laptop "just" to look at porn instead of the Sea Parks website.
    • Roy going a bit "Close Encounters mad" with the Sea Parks dilemma, courtesy of a generous serving of mashed potato and some gravy.
      • He eventually manages to figure out how the fire was caused by using a model Sea Park made of matchsticks. Just his reaction of sheer glee as he finally, finally figures out how it could have logically happened — at least until he realizes that his desk is burning down.
      • His match diorama of the sea lion arena still spends a fair amount of time just smoking:
        Roy: Look! Look at this! Look at how long its taking to go on fire. And this is made of matches!
    • Moss climbing into a claw machine and giving birth to an iPhone... then being stuck there all night after Jen forgot about him.
      "These toys may smell of wee come the morn."
  • Pretty much the entirety of the episode "Bad Boys", which starts with a teacher introducing a group of ex-cons to talk to the class about how to avoid a life of crime. The group includes Moss, who is dressed and acts like a stereotypical hip-hop gangster before assuming his usual speaking style as he tells his story.
    • The Fake-Out Make-Out from season 3 appears again as a magnificent Brick Joke when Moss, believing that they are about to be arrested for shoplifting, swoops in for another kiss, causing Roy to hiss, "That's not going to work this time!"
    • Then they walk out of the mall afterwards and Moss finds a work robot sitting on the street. Bewildered at seeing a real robot in person, he then proceeds to talk to it as if it were a lost animal, leading up to this.
    • The software for the bomb disposal robot crashing, with Roy and Moss being forced to give tech support to the bomb technician operating it while standing right next to the bomb. Plus, this lovely exchange that leads to it happening:
      Moss: What operating system does it use?
      Bomb Squad Tech: It's uhh...Vista!
      Moss: (panicking) We're going to die!
    • The episode then ends with Moss finishing his story and then asking the kids if they have any questions, before the camera cuts to a group of very young kids who look slightly freaked out by Moss's story.
  • "Your name is Maurice Moss, is it not?"
    • Three words: Goth To Boss!
    • Moss, to a Judge: "Thank you, my love".
    • "Bloody Blast, this is up my arse!"
    • "Balls from Hell, you shit-queen!"
    • Then there's Richmond's testimony for Douglas.
      Richmond: I worked at Reynholm Industries for seven years.
      Douglas: And what did you do there?
      Richmond: I don't know.
  • Douglas very much saying the wrong thing at his trial in "Reynholm Vs. Reynolm:"
    Douglas: ...and of course, there are all the rumours that I murdered my first wife...
    Jen: (sotto voce) No-one... no-one's mentioned that...
    • Douglas meets a lawyer in the same episode:
      Douglas: I've had enough of you! You're fired!
      Lawyer: Mr. Reynholm, I don't work for you. I'm representing your ex-wife.
      Douglas: PISS OFF!
      • Douglas thinking he’s got the measure of Victoria, who spends their entire legal meeting sitting motionless with an enormous pair of sunglasses on her face.
        Douglas: Look at her. Cold as ice. But I tell you this: behind those shades, she’s terrified.
        Victoria: [pause, sound of snoring]

The Internet is Coming

  • Moss' really sucky web series Game Board. The intro for it has to be seen to be believed.
  • Roy's Butt-Monkey status reaches ridiculous levels in the finale. He receives horrible coffee from a midget barista, has a noxious concoction burning his eyes when he's supposed to cry at his girlfriend's father's funeral, gets dumped by her and reaches infamy as the guy who pushed the barista into a van with tits.
  • The second coffee scene in the Final Episode. The first one involved Jen casually flirting with the hunky Italian barista who creates her face in her coffee, along with exciting music and facial close-ups. However, when Jen brings Roy along and asks for one to be made for him, the scene repeats - except that the music becomes severely distorted as the barista suffers a HeroicBSOD as he becomes confused between Roy and Jen's features. The end result is not pretty.
  • Douglas on The Secret Millionaire, in a Regency-era suit with a powdered wig.
    Douglas: Check your privilege!
  • Jen revealing that she still has "the Internet", and Roy realising he and Moss never told her the truth about it.
  • When Jen and Moss are preparing their presentation of a pepper spray for short women, Moss reveals he put the spray in nice looking perfume bottles. The presentation starts, Jen tells the audience (all women) to reach under their chairs for the new product, and they all automatically pick it up and spray themselves in the face thinking it's perfume.

Unsorted

  • Not technically within the show, but Richard Ayoade's 2014 BAFTA acceptance speech for Male Performance in a Comedy Programme certainly counts, due to his very un-Moss-like shyness and deadpan sense of humor. (Veers into Heartwarming Moments when he thanks his wife "for more than everything.")
    So I hope this serves as an inspiration to other nasal men with no facial expression or emotional range.
  • The DVD menus of the first two seasons are drawn and animated as parodies of many retro games.

Top