The Office is a BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award winning and Emmy-nominated British television comedy that first aired in the UK on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough, Berkshire branch of the fictitious Wernham Hogg Paper Company. Although fictional and scripted, the programme takes the form of a documentary (a fictional documentary, i.e. a mockumentary), with the presence of the camera often acknowledged.