The British Slant on the Mac v. PC Ads

Across the pond, Apple is run­ning a series of ads fash­ioned after the “Mac v. PC” com­mer­cials that have run so suc­cess­ful­ly in the States. Although the vocab­u­lary and accent are nat­u­ral­ly dif­fer­ent, the gist of the British ads is essen­tial­ly the same. Yes, Apple’s schtick trans­lates well, and I’m declar­ing the third one my favorite. (See the series of com­mer­cials below.)

As our read­ers from Lon­don will know (fact: we have more read­ers from Lon­don than any oth­er one city), the actors in Apple’s ads are hard­ly unfa­mil­iar. The two — David Mitchell (PC) and Robert Webb (Mac) — star in the award-win­ning Eng­lish sit­com, Peep Show, which is just about to begin a new sea­son. (Watch sec­ond clip below. Note that it fea­tures adult lan­guage and themes.)