Set in the basement offices of the IT department of Reynholm Industries the show depicts scenes familiar to programmers and system administrators. References to geek culture are frequent and include stickers of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, printouts of pictures showing the Flying Spaghetti Monster, T-shirt, and vintage computers, like the Altair 8800, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and many more loaned to the show by the Centre for Computing History.
Staffing the department are Maurice Moss (Richard Ayoade, The Mighty Boosh), Roy Trenneman (Chris O'Dowd, Moone Boy) and Jen Barber (Katherine Parkinson). The former two are stereotypical Übergeeks who despite their technical competence and prowess when it comes to pen and paper role-playing games lack social competence and are usually treated as weirdos by people outside their department. Jen on the other hand, having bluffed herself into being head of the department by claiming to have "a lot of experience with computers", acts as a conduit to the world outside for Roy and Moss – branding herself Relationship Manager – but her efforts to make herself and her department appear more normal in the eyes of others and promote her career often backfire. Not least due to her boss Douglas Reynholm (Matt Berry), whose ludicrous schemes and sexist behaviour often set off events that thwart all such plans.