They clearly did beat the original, in every way. The first 3 seasons shit on UK, and season 4 and 5 were better as well.
Well there are a lot of people seing that different. I do like both but they are very different.
UK The Office humor is a lot more subtle and they allow their characters a lot more range.
US one is more of a feel good high level soap and its really good comedy at times , sometimes great but the characters all miss that grounding in reality. If its dark in UK Office it is dark, no sugarcoating around it, in the us version everything gets eased of. Jim is the best example. He is always portrayed as this great guy. Thats how the series instructs you to see him even when a lot of his pranks are serious toxic and damaging at a workplace. Quite some of his "pranks" are asshole level. Lying, lazy..etc. But they dont go into that aspect at all.
There is often this distortion between characters actions and how they are portrayed to fit the narrative. The british just give it to you how it is and I love that. Thats just not a quality of US media in general.
He is ok as a character but clearly a product of fantasy. Everyone has to be loveable or quirky funny. Even if f.e. Michael does something truly despicable like trying to get Dwight get fired for his own mistake its all good again in the next episode.
I would say the first episodes of US Office, were they copy the plot of the original are far inferior. They copy without the bite. But then they really get it going by their own and produce very good comedy even if its a little bit shallow regarding character portray. In the end they drive the series from a cliff into telenovela soap level cringe fest. Steve imo was absolutely essential to the series.
I do like both in their own way. The US version is more rewatchable. The original feels more meaty and intelligent in design but with a David Brent I just cant stomach. Have to ff a lot of his scenes. Too cringy.
Steve on the other hand is fantastic and imo as an actor has a lot more range than Gervais who (now people will kill me) is kind of one time wonder with The Office. Everything else he produced is imo not good tv and as a character he is not really good in aynthing else