Like Our Man in Canberra, Scattergood: Friend of All, and Aunty Jack, A Nice Day at the Office began as an episode of the ABC's anthology program The Comedy Game. According to Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, the ABC had hoped that some episodes of their anthology show 'could act as pilots and spin-off into a series on a regular basis, allowing the ABC to screen at least one Australian-made comedy a week'.
Storey summarises the program as follows:
A Nice Day At The Office is a situation comedy satirising the public service. The two central characters, Ted Harvey and Sean Crisp, work in the Central Files office of a government department. Harvey is solidly entrenched in the career system of the public service and follows every rules in the book, an outlook completely foreign to the impetuous, irreverent Crisp. Their differing personalities often lead to clashes and petty ways of annoying each other.
Limited to seven episodes (excluding the episode of The Comedy Game that served as the pilot) by the availability of actor Neil Fitzpatrick, the program rated moderately well (no better or worse than other program's in the same time slot, perhaps, as Storey notes, 'indicating that most people who watched the series were loyal ABC viewers anyway') and received mixed reviews from critics.
