Ricky Gervais Show: “Clive Warren” (2.1)

One reason I was both excited and reluctant to cover The Ricky Gervais Show is how incredibly different it is from pretty much everything else on TV. It’s not quite reality television, a genre in which I have pretty much no interest. It’s probably closer to documentary. But the show’s also animated, making the whole thing even more difficult to categorize. It’s probably most similar to is Ari Folman’s film Waltz with Bashir—another interview-based documentary that’s animated—but there’s obviously a world of difference in what the two are trying to accomplish. The show is ultimately a glorified version of Gervais’ podcast, but they’re put together in a way that’s almost completely unique.
So the show can’t be covered the way I like to look at other comedies, addressing plots and characters and such because there are none. Seinfeld called itself a show about nothing, but Gervais’ truly is—there’s never been any attempt at pretending the show’s anymore than two comedians and their buffoonish friend having a chat. It just so happens that the trio is a wonderful mix, with Karl Pilkington offering insane ideas, Ricky Gervais getting frustrated listening to Karl, and Stephen Merchant sitting on the side offering snide comments. The show’s tagline pretty much explains the entire premise: “For the past few years, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington have been meeting regularly for a series of pointless conversations. This is one of them.”
With Season 2’s premiere the show takes on the simplest form we’ve seen yet. Every episode is edited together from the best parts of a podcast the trio recorded years ago, but they’re usually a bit more heterogeneous, featuring segments such as readers’ questions for Karl, monkey news, etc. Here there’s just two parts: Karl explaining a terrible, terrible movie idea he pitched and reading from his diary. The former comes out of a project we may see more from in the future, Ricky’s attempt to get Karl famous (because these aren’t full episodes of the podcast, it can be difficult to say what will make it in), while the later has quickly become the best segment of the entire show.