Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number

Ricky Gervais: Step into my office

He created one of the great sitcoms. He is a very funny man. And he's concerned about his 'legacy'. Which is exactly why Nicholas Barber would like to have a quiet word with Ricky Gervais

Published: 14 January 2007

Ricky Gervais opens his new live show wearing a plastic crown and a regal red robe, with his name in lights behind him and a six-foot model of an Emmy award to his left. "Not too much, is it?" he asks with mock-concern, but the answer is, no, it's not too much. If anything, it's not enough. Once he's slipped off the fancy dress, the reigning King of Comedy strolls around the stage for an hour and a bit in his trademark jeans and black T-shirt. He couldn't be more relaxed if he was at home in his pyjamas (which he is, he says, by 6.30 most nights).

He's such a natural comic that he gets laughs every time he unleashes his falsetto sarcasm or his saliva-soaked giggle. He skilfully deconstructs his stories as he's telling them, and he slips nimbly back and forth across the boundaries of taste, so we're never quite certain how offended to be.

But compared to any other stand-up show in a venue the size of Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall, it's a lackadaisical performance. Between swigs from a beer can, Gervais recounts a few chat-show anecdotes, does some student bar stuff about how nonsense songs don't make sense, has a smirk at those dunces who abused a paediatrician because they thought he was a paedophile, and dishes up regular portions of ironic homophobia.

At least, I assume it's ironic. When he makes an Aids joke, and then mutters, "I won't do that one in Brighton," I'm not 100-per-cent sure why it's less objectionable than it would have been if Jim Davidson had made the same remark. Overall, it's an amiable show, but there's not much in the way of depth or quotable punchlines, and there's no theme beyond the tour's title, Fame: doing charity gigs, signing autographs, being misrepresented in the tabloids, hugging Chris Tarrant. You'd assume that someone who didn't start writing The Office until his late thirties would have a stock of pre-fame memories to transmute into comedy. There was his stint in an Eighties pop duo, and then as a university entertainments officer, to name the two best-known jobs he had before he made headway at XFM and on Channel 4's 11 O'Clock Show. But instead of mining these veins of material, Gervais seems obsessed by his own celebrity. He's like one of those rock bands who get to their third album and can't dredge up anything to write songs about except groupies, hotel rooms and the disappointments of being a multi-millionaire.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. Since The Office brought Gervais sudden fame and fortune, he's been the proverbial kid in a candy store, living out the fantasies of every film and comedy geek. He made a guest appearance on Alias because he was a fan of the show. He wrote an episode of The Simpsons, and turned up in it in cartoon form. He became friends with Jonathan Ross, as every rising UK comedian is contractually obliged to do. When Channel 4 offered him his own interview strand, he jumped at the chance to badger his heroes, Larry David, Christopher Guest and Larry Shandling. His first film roles seem to be motivated by hero-worship, too. Having shone as a pompous boss in The Office, he can now be seen cameoing as a pompous boss in both Night at the Museum and For Your Consideration. Neither film is very good, but they did allow him to hang out with Ben Stiller and Christopher Guest, just as his role in the forthcoming Stardust let him share a studio with Robert De Niro.

"It's like winning a competition," he said in one recent interview. "It's like, would you like to play with Spinal Tap for a day? Yes. Would you like to play with The Godfather for a day? Yes." Gervais is not the first British comedian to jump on a plane to Hollywood, of course, and there's nothing wrong with mutual appreciation sessions with your idols. Indeed, there's something sweet about such a major star letting his inner fanboy come out to play. As his collection of Golden Globes and Emmys attests, the American entertainment industry loves the man from Reading, so you can hardly blame him for loving it back. Who wouldn't want to be Peter Lawford in a comedy Rat Pack?

On the other hand, it's getting harder to ignore the weird disjunction between the way Gervais talks about his career and the way it actually is.

Ever since The Office began broadcasting in July 2001, its star and co-creator has been repeating in interviews that he's primarily a writer and director, and that he gets "no joy from seeing my fat face on the screen". Initially, he said he didn't want to do too much TV as himself because he wanted viewers to enjoy the illusion that David Brent and his colleagues were real people; that was why he cast unknown actors.

He even boasted, somewhat ungallantly, that he'd turned down roles in Pirates of The Caribbean and the other films which went on to feature his Office co-stars. "Secretly I think I'd be quite good on QI," he told one interviewer, misinterpreting the word "secretly". "But you have to discipline yourself and you have to ration yourself. I can get sick of someone I like within the space of a weekend if I see them on two quiz shows and then in the Sunday paper." It's a strange statement from someone who once fought Anthea Turner's husband in a televised boxing match.

The Ricky Gervais who talks to journalists is a publicity-shy artist with exacting principles. "That quest for excellence, and also the legacy - I think about that," he said in The Radio Times. "I don't know if that's because I came to it older, but we really want to to have a great batting average. We don't want to let our guard down. You do it because you want to be proud of it." To Esquire, he pronounced: "When you're creating art, you've got to be a complete fascist." To GQ, he described himself and his co-writer and co-director, Stephen Merchant, as "comedy fundamentalists". He's often said that he doesn't rate many British comedians after Stan Laurel. "American comedy is better. It aims higher," he told Esquire. This Ricky Gervais is an ascetic, slightly intimidating perfectionist. And yet the other Ricky Gervais, the one who's all over the media, is someone who knows he won't be in the limelight forever, and who wants to revel in the exposure, the side projects and the glamorous friendships while he can.

It's impossible to exaggerate just how successful he's been. The Office has been broadcast in 80 countries, and remade in several, including the hit American edition with Steve Carell in the lead role. Sales of the British Office DVDs were record-breaking - four million is the current figure - and, as the tongue-in-cheek introduction to his live show reminds us, he's won an Emmy, two Golden Globes and six Baftas.

But this astonishing Midas Touch doesn't stop a large proportion of his work falling short of the benchmark he's set himself. His current stand-up tour, the fastest selling in history, sees him sitting right in the middle of his comfort zone. Podcasts of The Ricky Gervais Show are another record-breaking hit, but as funny as they can be, they consist largely of his XFM producer, Karl Pilkington, reeling off outlandish theories, while Gervais and Merchant berate him for not being as well educated as they are. And if his trio of children's picture books, Flanimals, hadn't had Gervais's name on it, the publisher would have sent it back with a polite note saying that it wasn't what they were looking for.

And then there's Extras. At the risk of inviting hate mail, I'd argue that Gervais and Merchant's second sitcom is, objectively, a patchy programme. Yes, it had its laughs. The fizzy water incident is destined to join Del Boy falling through the bar in all future bank holiday retrospectives of The 100 Best British Sitcom Moments. But it always felt less like a fully-formed show than an exercise in muscle-flexing by two writer-directors who had realised how powerful they were. They wanted superstars, they wanted location shooting, they wanted no canned laughter and almost no supporting cast; they had a list of minorities for the characters to upset and they wanted to tick them off methodically, week by week. Everything they wanted, they got.

The mysterious aspect of Extras was that it drew almost entirely from Gervais's own experiences in television, and yet it couldn't shake off a whiff of fakeness. It missed the satirical targets which were right in front of its creators' noses. Take its famous guest stars, for instance. On the programme which had the biggest influence on Extras, The Larry Sanders Show, the celebrity guests challenged us to spot where they ended and their scabrous self-parodies began, something Gervais himself does brilliantly on talk shows and on stage. But in Extras the celebs were all caricatured so ridiculously that there was never any danger that they might have been revealing their dark private selves. Did anyone watching it ever suspect that Daniel Radcliffe goes around propositioning actresses twice his age, or that Orlando Bloom pathologically hates Johnny Depp, or that Ben Stiller has exactly the same speech patterns as David Brent? Probably not. The actors could congratulate themselves on being good sports without the slightest risk.

Beyond that, there was the implausibility of Gervais's character, Andy Millman, being hoiked to stardom from work as a "background artist" even though - unlike Gervais - he had no TV-comedy experience. There was also the bewildering animus against the BBC, which was forcing Andy to wear a bad wig and specs in his sitcom-within-a-sitcom; when did that last happen in the real world? But what was more damaging was the series' grating inconsistencies. Sometimes Andy would be as crass and tactless as David Brent ever was, whereas at other times Andy would be the judicious one, and the solecisms would be parcelled out to his friend Maggie or his agent, played by Merchant.

In their introduction to the Extras script book, the writers say that they wanted a change from Brent. They wanted "Andy to be more like us: more normal, more self-aware, educated and liberal-minded, with a half-decent sense of humour". And so he was - some of the time. But he was also a man who saw a Bosnian refugee's photograph of his murdered wife, and then chided him for his choice of developer. "Oh, you missed a trick," he said. "Truprint give you a free film when you get something developed. So you're a mug." And witness the way Andy was shocked when Keith Chegwin grunted that the BBC was run by "Jews and queers" - and I'd love to know when anyone in showbusiness last said that - but was also horrified when a schoolmate he hadn't seen in 20 years thought he might be gay himself. (More only-just-ironic homophobia there.) "Andy's not a jerk at all," said Gervais in the Onion AV Club last week, but when it suited the joke, Andy mutated into David Brent multiplied by Basil Fawlty.

Whereas The Office took such pains to fool us, for half an hour at a time, that we were flies on the wall of a genuine paper merchants', Extras required viewers to give it the same leeway that they would a pantomime. In a single episode of the second series, Andy was at the BBC, filming a sitcom, and yet the same sitcom was already on air, getting a critical pasting, and Andy was also auditioning for a play, rehearsing it and performing it. Assuming that he wasn't supposed to be a Time Lord, Gervais and Merchant had given up caring whether their programme had any internal logic or not.

At the risk of inviting yet more hate mail, I'd suggest, too, that even in the second series of The Office, there were signs that its writers already believed the hype. Gareth was more obnoxious; Brent was more self-deluding; the humour was broader and cruder. When Brent frothed at a birthday party about how he'd have sex with the Corrs, the raucous, drunken festivities slammed to a halt and everyone stared in disgust.

Fair enough, that's the kind of thing which happens in sitcoms all the time, but the previous series hadn't felt like a sitcom; it had felt like an unwittingly hilarious documentary. The second series could have been written by someone who had watched the first one, but hadn't quite understood it.

That's not to say that anyone who masterminded those first terrific six episodes of The Office shouldn't be proud of himself. Nor is this an attempt to start a backlash or chop down a tall poppy. After all, everything Gervais does is worth a look, because he's funny even when - as on the current stand-up tour - he's not trying very hard. And when someone has accrued so many millions, so many plaudits and so many famous admirers he might feel justified in letting standards slip.

But let's get his output into perspective. Perhaps we should ease off on the King of Comedy accolades until Gervais's batting average, as he calls it, is a little closer to Galton and Simpson's or Clement and Le Frenais's. And that's not likely to happen unless he eases off on the cameos, the podcasts and the children's books. Maybe now that he's done a stand-up show called Fame, he can get back to the sort of work which made him famous.

The first leg of Ricky Gervais's stand-up tour has sold out. Tickets for the second leg, beginning on 6 March, go on sale on Tuesday at www.ticketzone.co.uk

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2152792.ece

BURN.

is this true?

xpost

xp

I would say that though, because I hate women.

Here's a scene. You're looking along your collection of CDs, or shuffling through your playlist, trying to find that new Lady Sovereign album or whatever. But you stumble across something else, something from 10 years ago - the Fugees, say."

That senile dribbling cunt with his own column in the Guardian weekend magazine.

That senile dribbling cunt with his own column in the Guardian weekend magazine.

Cue stock that's no way to talk about Zoe Williams gag.

I don't have a Wikipedia entry either.

Includes News Summary at 9.00pm.

like swimming in a cool sea and passing through a warm current, etc...

Where are the standards of today, I ask you.
I don't have a Wikipedia entry either.

-- Marcello Carlin (marcellocarli...)

Oh, have I got one?

Whew.

also on the bad can someone please put Have I Got News For You out of its misery.

At the risk of, on this reviewer's logic, inviting lynch-mobs to my door, I'd argue that Extras was shite.

xpost

To put things into context: Harry Hill aside, all British TV Comedy right now is total shit.

-- Ruairi Wirewool (horseproduction...), January 15th, 2007. (Ruairi Wirewool) (later)

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what were the chances of that happening?
-- mark grout (mark.grou...), January 15th, 2007. (mark grout) (later)

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If you can put CT and Green Wing on a par, you truly show a lack of discernment IMO.
Frankly, now that GW has been and gone, I'm inclined to agree with Ruairi, minus the bit about Harry Hill.

-- You've Got Scourage On Your Breath (papiermachealamphibia...), January 15th, 2007. (Haberdager) (later)

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If you can put CT and Green Wing on a par, you truly show a lack of discernment IMO.
no it's just a 'higher' (or rather 'stricter') level of discernment.

-- vita susicivus (n...), January 15th, 2007. (blueski) (later)

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'the thick of it' will be back, later in the year, and so will 'peep show'.
-- the original hauntology blogging crew (miltonpinsk...), January 15th, 2007. (Enrique) (later)

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but in a another more accurate sense...
-- mark s (mar...), January 15th, 2007. (mark s) (later)

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but then i do like Harry Hill so it's apples and roundabouts.
-- vita susicivus (n...), January 15th, 2007. (blueski) (later)

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rubbish
-- RJG (RJ...), January 15th, 2007. (RJG) (later)

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so you keep saying
-- vita susicivus (n...), January 15th, 2007. (blueski) (later)

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RJG's TV Burp
-- Dom Passantino (juror...), January 15th, 2007. (Dom Passantino) (later)

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Hmm. I was only talking about currently-running comedy shows. If Peep Show returns for a fourth bite at the cherry (and TTOI for a second), I will only be too delighted. Of course, the one I'm really looking out for is Nathan Barley II.
-- You've Got Scourage On Your Breath (papiermachealamphibia...), January 15th, 2007. (Haberdager) (later)

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i think it would be a big ask for there to be a 'great' uk comedy series to be running all 52 weeks of the year. i have low standards perhaps; but i don't ask for a 'great' film each month either.
-- the original hauntology blogging crew (miltonpinsk...), January 15th, 2007. (Enrique) (later)

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of course i too want 'nathan barley' back.
-- the original hauntology blogging crew (miltonpinsk...), January 15th, 2007. (Enrique) (later)

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They could drop scissors on a dog's head this time.
-- Dom Passantino (juror...), January 15th, 2007. (Dom Passantino) (later)

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uh, rose-tinted view there i reckon - but at least it was generating interesting discussion.
one episode of Screen Wipe a month would be good. ditto TV Burp.

-- vita susicivus (n...), January 15th, 2007. (blueski) (later)

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ha ha Dom OTM
-- vita susicivus (n...), January 15th, 2007. (blueski) (later)

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Unread Messages
as with 'green wing', take away the hype and the expectation it'll live up to 'the day today' and 'nathan barley' was 23 minutes well-spent. i lolled anyway.
-- the original hauntology blogging crew (miltonpinsk...), January 15th, 2007. (Enrique) (later)

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i didn't laugh more than i did laugh etc.
-- vita susicivus (n...), January 15th, 2007. (blueski) (later)

And Screen Wipe rocks.

S12 UK was great! Desree! Guz!! Morganna!!!

Hmm, I just remember it as Alan Davies and VCM being able but not really funny. I thought Morgana was great but stood out in a shallow pool.

> Liza Tarbuck was a manic, mischievous energy

the thing i remember most about her in this series was her just stomping something into the ground.

The thing where she gets Alex to plant his naked arse into a cake

That's what I won't forget

Anyway, this show is remarkable in how it's redeemed a whole slew of what I imagined were low-table DAVE panel-show dullards and proved they are actually very very very funny (tbh I watch no panel shows beyond WILTY). The TM magic failed with Russell, however.

Very few people can't be redeemed by Taskmaster, so it's quite an achievement for Russell Howard to be as bad at this as he is at everything else.

Do you guys get to see the New Year one-off specials? There's some real gold in there too - Rylan Clark and Kojey Radical and Shirley Ballas should really have done a whole series.

I liked Alan Davies a whole lot more than VCM on their series. And I concur that it's probably possible to die laughing at Tim Vine's stand up. He's the absolute GOAT at his format.

Yeah Kojey was great.

i thought it was time for a dedicated taskmaster thread: a thread for Taskmaster

I’m in!

catching up with Colin from Accounts and it's pretty good, albeit without much Colin. episode 5, the Brisket episode, especially good.

they were on Front Row tallking about it and it gave it a bit more context. all those jokes about being married, all the age difference jokes, the odd phrase here and there (Dame Edna, sleak brown dog...) all from life.

and Ludwig starts tonight, him from everything and her from everything, comedy detective show. i will give it a go but it's on bbc1

Love Colin, tho heart sank as everything went tits-up in the final ep (hoping there's a s3 to make it all good again). the episode in the resto with her mate's awful gf was excellent. it's a sharp and warm romcom but - and this is key - it also has a line or a joke or a setpiece every episode - and indeed, often several - than genuinely has me LOLing.

Still not clear if the couple also partook of the drug party in that one episode and I think they purposefully kept it vague

and Ludwig starts tonight, him from everything and her from everything, comedy detective show. i will give it a go but it's on bbc1

― koogs, Wednesday, 25 September 2024 18:22 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Watched ten minutes of this and couldn't be bothered with continuing, not enjoyable or interesting on any level.

As someone who likes wry, silly, murder mysteries based around puzzles, and Mark Corrigan trying to wing it in fish-out-of-water situations, and Anna MM being a bit sarcastic, this in theory is right up my street. Unfortunately the "case of the week" aren't fun puzzles you can work out (yet) and you don't see any of the 'main' puzzle. So it's more for people who like the idea of puzzles but not actually doing them. I'll watch them all though I guess.

Really like Colin From Accounts. Altho - did I miss something with Meggles and who she was with then wasn't? And the Rumi character at the dinner was amazing!

https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2024/10/02/56722/whos_taking_part_in_last_one_laughing_uk%3F?rss

Feel like Ayoade is absolutely going to win this.

just finished ludwig, thought it was good enough to be annoyed at having to wait for series 2. ymmv.

chance would be a fine thing

oh, i can't stand him...

my mother about chris mccausland.

and not only do they not watch taskmaster, they didn't even know what it was.

i guess they've stopped doing comedy

anyway, i have been enjoying these things on bbc sounds whilst walking around (all recently repeated on radio4extra)

Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b00fq3kr
Lee and Herring from 1993, Rebecca Front and Armando Iannucci

Women Talking About Cars
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00clsbk
Coren-Mitchell talking to various showbiz chums about cars. So many minis and morris minors...

Sarah Kendall: Australian Trilogy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b08hk1jq

Alex Edelman's Peer Group
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b08smc1c

and probably my favourite
Isy Suttie's Love Letters
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042m6pl

Bridget Christie: Mortal
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m000v2sy

Sean Lock - 15 Storeys High
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b09hmrrk
oh, this is disappearing off sounds but it's quite close to the tv show anyway

Paul Sinha's Perfect Pub Quiz
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024dg9

some ivor cutler as well, but they seem to be short and short-lived

I didn't know there was a 15SH radio show - thanks!

Great list.

I’ll add Tim Key’s Poetry Programme (spoiler: not actually a poetry programme)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b03pn5pl

oh i meant to add more notes than i did

the Kendall is more stories than jokes but still contains jokes. probably best, i learned later, listened to in order (it lists them in descending order of series but ascending episode order so 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, then 1.1...)

it's funny listening to IA on his new show about political language and then playing the professor of urology at Leicester de Montford in the Lee and Herring show from 30 years ago.

Isy has a new show with Dara which is basically the same as the one he does with Hannah Fry but they both play the dumb one.

one of Love Letters includes how she and Elis met and is quite sweet when you realise.

Thanks for all the recs! Not BBC, but I've been listening to James Acaster's audiodrama (audiocomedy?) Springleaf, which picks up on some of the plot strands from the Repetoire netflix specials. Not the greatest thing he's ever done, but slots in nicely amidst the Goon Show and Beyond Our Ken eps I've been listening to.

it's funny listening to IA on his new show about political language and then playing the professor of urology at Leicester de Montford in the Lee and Herring show from 30 years ago.

Listen, a lot of careers go down the drain as people get older.

This is the podcast he's doing with notorious TERF Helen Lewis? Yeah hard pass on that and disappointing that he's working with her (though after the last decade my expectations of IA were already very low)

Helen Lewis and Armando Iannucci investigate which political buzzwords are strong and stable and which are a crock of covfefe.

There is not enough cringe in the world.

i guess they've stopped doing comedy

I watched two (2) new BBC comedies recently, and enjoyed them both. Season two of Alma's Not Normal was solid working-class, exaggerated, character comedy from Sophie Willan. And also Smoggie Queens on BBC Three, which maybe wasn't the most polished sitcom ever, but I got a kick out of, especially with my be-generous-to-the-young-up-and-comers head on.

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/news/8204/most-watched-tv-comedies-2024/

nobody even mentioned Gavin and Stacey (i didn't watch it)

too much of the rest of that list is entertainment or chat show rather than comedy imo.

armando is good on that podcast, anecdotes for days with his stints on Veep etc. barely mentions being the Hammond Organ specialist or Gordon Burns in Inexplicable World.

I rewatched all of Gavin and Stacey over the holidays and it's that rare beast of a comedy which didn't outstay its welcome and whose infrequent Christmas specials didn't feel hideously gratuitous.

i have finished all of the above and have been looking for something else.

tried the Tim Key but the comedy bickering is very much DO NOT WANT. will try one of the 30 minute episodes but i've a feeling they will be the same.

also tried That Mitchell and Web Sound (series 4) but had heard it before (maybe on the tv)

and also tried There's No Such Thing As A Fish but lasted about 5 minutes. too giggly, too much 'here's a fun fact...' (also bad sound quality)

oh, and much as i love isy and dara i think their new series might be garbage.

there's a new Nathalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics in the works though, recording soon.

(the Una Stubbs episode of Women Talking About Cars was lovely though, despite her not having driven since 79)

((entire thing made me wonder why we aren't still making Minis and Morris Minors, about half the guests had one or the other or both))

oh, and much as i love isy and dara i think their new series might be garbage.

It’s really bad.

Cockfields on BBC2 tonight (series 2) which was originally a Gold show. the first series was on bbc2 last year sometime. remarkable for reminding me that bobby ball is still alive (the cast has big old names on it, but dianne morgan seems to not be involved in season 2)

similarly, The Outsiders is also back on bbc2 soon, previously a Dave show (now U&Dave)

Unfortunately Bobby Ball is not still alive.

(ah, i see, 3 episodes, 2019)

(Bobby Ball has been replaced by Rab C Nesbit)

Not exactly like for like then.

same character name so I'm guessing he's a direct replacement, whereas the old girlfriend, Morgan, got described as such and traduced by the mother.

but, yeah, different accent, same casual sexism and passive aggression. it's like being home for Christmas.

Things I have discovered after having my recommendations flooded after watching Taskmaster

Is the UK media economy built on panel shows and dective dramas? Does anything else still get produced?
8 Out of 10 Cats is terrible
8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown is better
Too bad the numbers woman from Countdown is apparently a raging Islamophobe
There is no correlation between "good on Taskmaster" and "otherwise funny" (Aisling Bea's standup is easily bottom 5 I've seen)

Is the UK media economy built on panel shows and dective dramas?

Yes.

Also cookery and house makeover shows.

and selling the family silver

nobody's mentioned Amandaland. People enjoyed Motherland and this is a bigger spin off on the main channel and with parachuted in stars but...

(Aisling Bea's standup is easily bottom 5 I've seen)

I've never seen her standup, but her sitcom This Way Up is good.

Amandaland is apparently a surprise hit for the BBC

I liked Motherland. Amandaland suffers from not having the other main characters (mainly Diane Morgan and Kevin).

I liked Motherland. Amandaland suffers from not having the other main characters (mainly Diane Morgan and Kevin).

I've never seen her standup, but her sitcom This Way Up is good.

Agreed but did that ever come back? Abrupt covid ending.

Amandaland seemed to take the worst character and focus on her, and added Joanna Lumley. just didn't appeal.

> Amandaland is apparently a surprise hit for the BBC

is no Mrs Brown's Boys