Linux on Film: The IT Crowd Season 1 Episode 3

The British TV comedy series The IT Crowd (2006-2008) is a funny but short-lived series about a trio of IT staff sequestered in the company basement. The series actually doesn't deal too much on information technology or consumer electronics at all but like the British series Coupling focuses more on the characters' odd social interactions.

In episode 3, a poster advertising the O'Reilly tech media publishing company hangs behind Richard Aoyade's character. The poster is probably intentionally blurred to avoid any sort of free advertising but SUSE and Linux users can probably make out the lizard logo and fairly popular Linux reference books. Since episode 3 was aired in 2006, the book on the poster was probably about SUSE Linux 10.x.


Richard Aoyade in "The IT Crowd". Screenshot from Episode 3 Season 1.

Although the series was filmed more than 5 years ago, the comedy presents a fascinating look at how quickly technology moves in such a short period of time. Windows XP is shown prominently on occasion and the slow broadband depicted in one episode is a testament of how far we've gone in the realm of IT.