"Extras" - Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant

Ricky plays Andy Millman who, having given up his day job to be an actor, finds he just can't land the big parts.

In fact, he rarely gets a speaking role so spends most of his days stuck in a green room with other extras, envying the A-list stars, with his fellow actor, Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen).

Each week Extras has a different setting and cameo appearances from guest artists including Samuel L Jackson, Kate Winslet, Ben Stiller, Ross Kemp, Vinnie Jones and Les Dennis."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/extras/

guest artists including Samuel L Jackson, Kate Winslet, Ben Stiller, Ross Kemp, Vinnie Jones and Les Dennis.

Because it shouldn't be just me.

I also don't know who Ross Kemp and Les Dennis are. The british Ben Stillers?

Les Dennis = former crap "family" comedian turned crap game show host turned public cuckold turned reality TV loser and "most likely to completely lose his shit at some point and get taken down by an armed response unit".

*cough*iquitelikebenstiller*cough*

Whether or not this will be worse than Max and Paddy is going to be the real question.

i'd amp up the ratings on that already sinking ship!!!!

http://www.poetaster.co.uk/11.jpg

Not so on Arrested Development. The episode he guested in last season was one of the best.

Watching the last epsiode I thought it woukld be good if there was a live commentary going on on this thread and it turns out there was, but sadly I cannot view and post at the same time.

What puzzles me is why the McKellan "gay jokes" episode dismayed me so much, whereas the rest of it tickled me. I mean, I don't think there was much difference really.

I don't think the celebs are based on themselves really, because Robery Lindsay was more or less the same as Ornaldo Bloomps, Ben Stiller, etc.

People think Ashley Jensen is ugly and plain and rubbish because, erm, why exactly? - not funny.

OTM. Ashley Jensen is HOT STUFF.

so far good (only seen the first episode). people seem to be putting so much cultural baggage on this show in the above thread.

would be sort of funny, but maybe an admission that you can't really 'damage the legacy' of something that was always abject bollocks.

in retrospect that 'brave' decision to end 'the office' is just an admission he didn't know where to go with it next. once again the UK practice of relying on tiny writing teams looks downright perverse.

so: christmas special, then?

i thought it was quite, quite wonderful. actually quite touchingly so. obviously i wonder how much of that was genuine gervais bile and how much was character -- but then i've been wondering that since he first cropped up on the 11 o'clock show (and i fucking hated him). either way: although there are many, many flaws in big celebs doing the woe-is-me-the-celeb schtick, if you are gonna do it then surely that's the way.

also: the carphone warehouse stuff with dean gaffney was a fucking joy.

Really excellent. If it's on alluc already I'll be watching it again before bed.

Brilliant.

Does Noodle like this?

Just went to watch this on bbc iplayer (which I've used successfuly before only a few weeks ago) and got this message:

Sorry, this programme is only available to play in the UK

when I am in the UK.

The help info tells me this:

I'm in the United Kingdom but told that I'm not?

Sometimes even though you're in Britain it's possible you may see a message saying you're not. This could be because your computer is on a foreign-based network, or is routed overseas (sometimes the case with work connections if your employer is not UK-based). Some programs, such as web accelerators, can cause your IP address to appear as if it is outside the UK.

If BBC iPlayer doesn't recognise your IP address at all, then you won't be able to stream or download programmes.....

i've yet to explore the (apparently now mac-friendly via flash) iPlayer. i'm imagining there'll be torrents of this bad boy everywhere.

Noodle is not sure.

I'm certainly not the wide-eyed fanboy I was at the top of the thread, to the extent that I haven't even seen the Xmas special yet. I've been thinking about why I dislike it since this thread got revived, and there's a few reasons, most of them not really germane to the show itself. I like some of the comedy well enough, but I guess I wanted the show to gnaw the hand that feeds it rather than give it a playful nip. It's no Larry Sanders, partly because you don't ever feel that Gervais or his onscreen persona hates himself like Garry Shandling seems to. What quitney says up there about tiny writing teams in the UK is very true too. And I'm kinda bored of sitcoms, especially British ones. I don't know why exactly but I think comedy is being sacrificed for a kind of cosiness, straining for audience recognition or approval before actual laughs.

On the plus side they still do great dialogue and I find Gervais/Merchant's comedy fecklessness genuinely funny on occasion. I dunno, it's like I don't want to think about this stuff much at the moment because it's become too problematic or overdetermined. I'm just taking the roffles where I find them and trying to avoid grand unifying theories. I think peeps like G/M would do well to do similar, and I think the Beeb or whoever should employ teams more often on stuff that isn't My Family.

I like some of the comedy well enough, but I guess I wanted the show to gnaw the hand that feeds it rather than give it a playful nip. It's no Larry Sanders, partly because you don't ever feel that Gervais or his onscreen persona hates himself like Garry Shandling seems to.

i think you might be pleasantly surprised by the special, on both counts.

I kinda gathered that. I might give this iplayer thing a spin but my online video attention span is usually about 3 minutes tops.

Well I enjoyed 95% of it. Could have done without the sound track - for example accompanying Maggie moping in her miserable job.

Overall it has an incredibly depressive edge, despite the 'happy ending'. It could do with being more playful (for example the George Michael scene - celeb sending up their own images) and not focussing in on the character of Andy so much.

*spoliler alert*

it was better than expected yes, but it wasn't perfect. the denouement with gervais sat in the BB house ranting about rubbish celebs etc was frustratingly pompous. like every soapbox pub bore who craps on about paris hilton and jade goody etc. we get it ricky, you're a better person because you've never pandered to the tabloids, here have a gold star. he forgets that to josie public it's not the be-all end-all, it's just a mild distraction. he generally ruins the show by trying hard to be seen as the everyman [character says something racist/homphobic/weird --> cut to gervais rolling his eyes]. and his attempt to hit the mood of a nation, to speak for the moral majority, falls to shit when you recall the nasty mean-spirited shite he came out with on the 11 o clock show ('character' or no). if he'd shown some humility and ended the show with a quiet inner victory rather than a hollywood 'ricky tells it how it is and saves the 21st century!' it would have been much less cloying.

but despite that it was very good yes - the merchant, gaffney & barry scenes were an absolute delight. apparently this was shown on HBO in the US a week or so ago (a torrent was uploaded to thebox.bz) and that had some changes to make it more relevent to american viewers. i was trying to spot where these changes may have been - the bit in the shop looking at dolls with the owner saying he'd invested in a bunch of (x factor losers) 'same difference' dolls was a definite, but what else? there seemed to be some shoddy editing around the carphone warehouse scene which makes me think maybe the filmed those clips again without gaffney and with his american equivalent. </nerd>

if anyone fancies going through both eps and noting the differences then hey you have too much time on your hands but i'd love to know

was gonna watch this but you've put me off again

we get it ricky, you're a better person because you've never pandered to the tabloids, here have a gold star

eh?

he generally ruins the show by trying hard to be seen as the everyman [character says something racist/homphobic/weird --> cut to gervais rolling his eyes]

what?

i couldn't agree less. i think the whole point of the BB speech is that millman (gervais? who knows) is saying that whatever desperate measures celebs take, tabloid pandering or no, it's all ultimately meaningless and pish. i certainly didn't detect any smugness there; quite the opposite, in fact. more a slightly desperate realisation that, ultimately, they're all equally desperate for fame.

and millman as everyman? after the excruciating interview scene; calling the entire audience for the sitcom morons; getting extras fired; tooling about the ivy etc? gervais himself might be guilty of this, to an extent -- i mean, i found most of that podcast shit tediously unfunny -- but i certainly don't think he's written the character of AM as an everyman (and certainly not in this episode).

SPOIL, ETC.: Official bit that won me: cutting from Andy's redemptive apology to Maggie to Darren's "I've been waiting to hear that"

Sometimes even though you're in Britain it's possible you may see a message saying you're not. This could be because your computer is on a foreign-based network, or is routed overseas (sometimes the case with work connections if your employer is not UK-based). Some programs, such as web accelerators, can cause your IP address to appear as if it is outside the UK.

If BBC iPlayer doesn't recognise your IP address at all, then you won't be able to stream or download programmes.....

That's encouraging for licence fee payers. The BBC has lost the plot.

"BBC led me to illegal downloading" shocker.

I had a look on the iplayer message boards - it seems that if you turn your router off and generate another IP address, you can sometimes get it to work. But until the BBC makes it work better, who's going to move from torrenting?

out of curiosity, i just had a look at the iPlayer for the first time. meh. the quality's rotten, for a start! really don't think it's going to change my viewing habits one iota.

still, hey, it works on my mac. which is nice of you, BBC. (doffs cap, exits room backwards; sparks small scandal, requiring BBC to show footage of him entering room and putting cap back on again)

I don't wanna be all on the BBC's dick or anything but isn't it good that they're trying to do this and isn't it unlikely that it will be perfect for all users from day 1?

ok - but they've spent a fortune on it. Also it's not really day one - they released the beta back in the summer, and it was shockingly poor considering the time and resources put into what is essentially a tweaked off the shelf commercial solution that Channel 4 were already using.

I guess they put all the money and time into digital rights negotiations rather than the 'customer interface'.

isn't it unlikely that it will be perfect for all users from day 1

hmm: forgive me for being a little pissy, but the original "get to fuck, mac user" thing still rankles slightly.

and, fundamentally, the quality seemed borderline unwatchable there :(

Dude, Youtube has fucked my eyes forever.

I've been watching the Extras series back-to-back lately and though it has some of the funniest individual scenes I can remember in a recent sitcom it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. In a way Gervais reminds me of Woody Allen. Both are tremendously funny with individual jokes, and verbal humor especially, but their greater personality and outlook on life is very distasteful. Gervais is like Allen in that once he found fame and success he took to making a character that was far more autobiographical than what he was doing earlier - and that character was very narcissistic and misanthropic. Like in Allen's late 70s streak of films everybody in Extras is either a sucker or unsympathetic - except for the autobiographical protagonist who, despite his (albeit superficial) flaws, is the only person in the world who is smart enough to see through all the bull. He is the wise prophet no one is smart enough to listen to until it is too late.

And there's such a cynical and smug attitude that lies behind the work. What does Gervais think of the people who helped his career take off (The BBC Comedy department)? They're a bunch of know-nothing buffoons. Every celebrity needs to laugh at himself and get deflated, but has anybody seen the seriousness with which Gervais takes himself and his shows? I get the idea that Gervais doesn't so much hate celebrity culture because he isn't a fan of idolatry so much as he thinks that people who compete with him for public attention aren't nearly as deserving as he. Do we even need to discuss the hatred Gervais projects on the people who watch crappy sitcoms and the average folks who work on films sets? It's one thing to loathe the worst pop culture (which we all hate, at least in theory) but it's another to hate the people who consume it. It's all very nasty but, like Allen, he tries to temper the arrogance and hate with false humility and light self-deprecation ("Oh, well, I, too, have some flaws - however superficial and overrated they may be! Bit of a perfectionist and an overthinker, I'm afraid.").

I never was able to watch Extras apart from a few episodes, mainly because I don't find Gervais to be capable of playing an very interesting everyman. He's much better at playing the despicable buffoon.

I thought the final special did give a little more heat on Gervais' character getting addicted to celebrity and such and sort of redeeming himself by the end. Also I didn't find the character sympathetic throughout the series either, I think the show was designed that way - he did get embarrassing comeuppances all the time (Bowie!).

I do see your point somewhat though, I was a little confused where they were going with it since the first season seemed more autobiographical, but clearly When the Whistle Blows is nothing like The Office, so where's this bitter smugness coming from? The doing embarassing/useless guest roles seemed far more apt (ever see his random appearance in Alias?) to his own career, but in any case maybe it shouldn't be looked at too literally.

It's one thing to loathe the worst pop culture (which we all hate, at least in theory) but it's another to hate the people who consume it.

True, but there's definitely at least some mutual blame going around there. There's been lots of base crap shoved down our throats that's been totally unsuccessful and ignored, and only specific crap actually gets accepted by the masses, there's definitely some zeitgeist or mass selectivity always going on.

Over a year later but Cunga OTM!

Gervais doesn't seem to have many friends in Brit comedy. The Pegg/Serafinowicz axis absolutely despise him.

wasn't aware of that, are there any interviews with serafinowicz, pegg or popper that back this up?

A number of performers stradle the two axes, surely. Er... Martin Freeman's been in some Pegg stuff hasn't he?

the invention of lying really seals the deal on gervais = smug dick and the worst part is it's not even funny