Reviews
by Michael Demenchuk -- Multichannel News, 2/1/2010 2:00:00 AM
THE RICKY GERVAIS SHOW
(Friday, Feb. 19, 9 p.m.)
Ricky Gervais returns to HBO — this time in animated form — for his latest project, The Ricky Gervais Show. And if the material seems familiar, that’s because you may have heard it before: the half-hour long series essentially consists of segments from a series of 12 podcasts that Gervais and writing partner Steven Merchant created for the U.K. Web site Guardian Unlimited in 2005, set to new animation from production house Wildbrain.
The podcasts were an outgrowth of a pre-The Office radio show Gervais and Merchant did for London’s XFM radio and their true star is Karl Pilkington, that show’s producer.
Pilkington’s observations are pretty offbeat. He argues against most 20th-century inventions, saying most things people needed had already been invented before then (as Merchant and Gervais mock him mercilessly for not realizing the car and the TV were 20th-century advances); urges the invention of a new, biologically impossible approach to human reproduction; and delivers the “Monkey News,” implausible news stories involving chimps which almost certainly aren’t true, though Karl insists they are.
The humor comes both from Karl’s offbeat views and his colleagues’ reaction to them. Gervais reacts particularly hysterically to Karl’s “Monkey News” description of the first monkey space flight, collapsing with laughter as Pilkington explains how an on-board banana dispenser incented the pilot to hit the “turn left” button. Gervais and Merchant also make much sport of his physical appearance, particularly his round “like an orange” head.
The animation — in the style of early ’60s Hanna-Barbera cartoons like The Flintstones and Yogi Bear — adds charm and extra humor.
The Ricky Gervais Show isn’t must-see TV in the vein of the original The Office or Gervais’ previous HBO effort, Extras. But it is a light, fun half-hour worth setting the DVR for.
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