Make it so?….er sorry i can’t…

[cliff]

Life is so cruel…was all geared up to meet the man with his own ready room but Patrick’Engage’Stewart will not be attending collectormania 13, the void is to be filled by none other that John Barrowman of Torchwood/Who fame.

Still it’s a good chance to meet Hattie and the guy who was in Different Strokes…

http://www.collectormania.com/

Topic

[si]

John Barrowman you say? That’s unusual, he’s a virtual recluse…

[cliff]

Still, Leslie Phillips is there!…Welll Helllllllew!.

And for those of you who still love the original Bionic Woman ‘Lindsay Wagner’ along with none other than Tony Curtis and Caroline Munro at the london autographica 11 Heathrow.

Cliff does like meetin the legends!.

[Seb Patrick]

“Have you seen the PLAAAAAY?”

[Pete Part Three]

I guess he was otherwise engaged.

Sorry.

[TheLeen]

Hahaha!

[Zombie Jim Undead]

…but of course, by then, I’d seen everything.

[Pete Part Three]

Odd how the only Extras cameo that was better than Professor X’s, was Magneto’s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43sbtkQM6zc

[Zombie Jim Undead]

ianianianianianianianianYOUSHALLNOTPASS!!!!!!ianianianianianianianian

[ChrisM]

That was great. It’s great how him stating the smegging obvious (“I pretend to be someone else”) is so funny.

[Ben Paddon]

Both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were incredible in Extras.

[Danny Stephenson]

On the grounds of those clips, i have to buy Extras on DVD…

[si]

Ah, yes, but Extras features Ricky Gervais, WHO IS VILE AND MUST DIE.

So there.

*other opinions are available.

*but they are wrong.

[Ben Paddon]

Ricky Gervais is a git, yes, but Extras is oddly enjoyable. Certainly more than The Office ever was. I absolutely adored the Christmas special.

[Pete Part Three]

>Certainly more than The Office ever was.

Wha…huh…wha…

[Andrew]

> Wha?huh?wha?

I second that confusion.

UPCOMING GAME SPOILER ALERT.

Gervais shows up in the new GTA game. Though quite what he’d be doing in a comedy club these days is unexplained.

Ba-dum tch! (Y’see it implies that he’s not funny anymore. Because he’s not funny anymore. Yes, I like The Office, but the downslide is complete. Sure, ruin five minutes of Stardust if you must, but Night At The Museum was, I think, one of the signs of a coming apocalypse.)

[Ridley]

I prefer Extras to The Office…

Why do you find him not funny anymore, Mr. Ellard? Is it because he plays the same character in everything?

I’m never sure what I think of the man. I do wonder when his whole irony schtick with his celebrity or controversy will leave people wondering if that’s what he actually thinks.

[Ben Paddon]

Uncle Pete Martin! Mum always puts paper down!
>Certainly more than The Office ever was.

Wha?huh?wha?

You heard.

[Andrew]

> Why do you find him not funny anymore, Mr. Ellard? Is it because he plays the same character in everything?

It’s more the ‘smug git’ thing, really. Going on Comic Relief every time and plugging his stuff – but ‘ironically’, so it’s apparently a great joke and not self-promotion at all. Answering critics who say he’s lost it by…telling them how much lovely money he gets for doing crap like Night at the Museum. Parading his ego around as if it’s integrity (Extras series two and special – yikes. Those NEEDED some channel interference.) The way he’s lauded by genuinely great comic icons in America, when better British talents can’t get noticed or exported. (They hug Gervais but barely notice Coogan? What IS that?!) The whole ‘one trick pony’ deal. Watching him and Jonathan Ross smarm it up on TV on a Friday night…

I say again, I LOVE The Office. I even have a soft spot for the podcasts, though the bullying they often relies on concerns me. And he’s clearly VERY intelligent. But the shtick has past its sell-by.

I did enjoy him at Live 8, though – for all the wrong reasons. How does an alleged ‘stand up comedian’ in the middle of a tour not have five minutes of material in his memory that he can fill with? Nope, far better to do ‘the dance’.

[Pete Part Three]

His ventures away from Stephen Merchant are not great. Extras was

Night at the Museum was awful, but it was awful regardless of Gervais’s involvement. Haven’t seen Stardust. His stand-up is pretty mediocre but he’s a good performer. His relationship with Jonathan Ross is as embarrassing as the spoof of it in Extras.

Extras was a little inconsistent but I think the Podcasts are great. Pilkington is either the stupidest man in the world or the greatest actor in the world.

[Phil]

>(They hug Gervais but barely notice Coogan? What IS that?!)

Whomever decides which BBC programs to export is certainly more to blame for that than either Gervais or Coogan and I can’t see you holding it against Gervais.

Blame it easily on the fact that The Office arrived here with enormous fanfare and multi-network advertising (I didn’t even have BBC America at the time and I always knew which episode was going to air next, and when), with a fairly quick turnaround after its UK run (meaning it was still “fresh”). I’m Alan Partridge, on the other hand, is the ONLY thing Coogan has done that’s had a US airing. (Saxondale may have had a US airing in the recent time that I’ve been without a television, but if that’s the case, then I haven’t heard a thing about it.)

And it came unadvertised.

About two years ago.

To a morning slot.

Between two episodes of Bargain Hunt or some crap.

I understand your frustration…I’m the only American I know who’s seen League of Gentlemen, but practically everyone can quote Little Britain. But you can’t hold it against either one of them, though, because one has actually been introduced to the country with some dignity, and the other just kind of appeared and vanished.

[Andrew]

> His ventures away from Stephen Merchant are not great. Extras was

I’m really not overly impressed by it. I quite liked the first series, though the ‘shocking celeb cameo’ thing got old fast. But the second series…bah. The whole thing of Andy making a sitcom a) took us miles away from what the show was actually about, b) was self-indulgent self-referencing, and c) was seriously disingenuous given that the Beeb DID give him creative freedom to make The Office how he wanted. (It also has dreadful, smug things to say about ‘regular sitcom’ and the people that make it.)

Also, Maggie’s character got really short shrift in the writing – more Merchant was welcome, but it should have been at the expense of the indulgent Andy stuff, instead the time was found by making Maggie third fiddle and shallowing up the character.

What else? The protracted ‘social embarrassment’ set-pieces became slow and dragging and…old. (Andy debating with a beggar at the start of series two was just AWFUL.) And the finale required us to invest in Andy’s conflicting desires for ‘fame’ and ‘integrity’. But the character had so little substance up until that point that it was hard to do so – not least because the need for fame (as opposed to simply finding a ‘point’ to extra-ing by appearing in shot) hadn’t been part of his nature until the end. But then, with thin characters, you CAN just graft new characteristics on.

…for all those reasons, I soon tried of the whole thing. And his schtick was just a part of that.

> Whomever decides which BBC programs to export is certainly more to blame for that than either Gervais or Coogan and I can?t see you holding it against Gervais.

Well, Coogan was just a quick example. And sure, I get why he’d want to ingratiate himself, given the chance to meet and work with a few legends. But ‘well-known’ isn’t everything. ‘People’ will have found him thanks to the promotion you mention, but it’s not like there isn’t an inside track. (The very track Russell Brand got in on, in fact.)

My problem isn’t that he’s ‘known in America’; it’s the specific heroes of mine who not only call him in, but actually seem to revere the guy. I don’t think the body of work deserves that reverence – and when you’re talking about an area of the business where catching the talent ON the rise, rather than after it’s risen, it’s not just about ‘success’.

Not that this was my biggest issue. Just another stick on the fire.

[Pete Part Three]

> His ventures away from Stephen Merchant are not great. Extras was

That doesn’t actually read as intended. I took the line about Extras and moved it towards the bottom of the post but left “Extras was…” still in place, so it reads as “Extras was great” which is a slight over-statement. It has great moments, but as I go on to say, it’s very inconsistent.

>The whole thing of Andy making a sitcom a) took us miles away from what the show was actually about,

Yup

>b) was self-indulgent self-referencing,

Yup

>and c) was seriously disingenuous given that the Beeb DID give him creative freedom to make The Office how he wanted.

Yeah, I couldn’t understand why THEY were making this point at all.

[Ben Paddon]

The Extras finale works much better as a standalone piece than as a conclusion to the series. I’d only seen two episodes of the series in full when I watched it – the first episodes of each series, as it happens – and I thought it was top stuff. I’ve gone back and watched a couple of episodes from the first series and it’s enjoyable stuff.

My problem with Ricky Gervais is that he only has one act. One. Oh, he tried to do something different when he guest-starred in Alias, but it didn’t work, did it? He can’t do “serious”. He doesn’t have it in him. His shtick is “bloke who speaks his mind and more often than not ends up putting his foot in his mouth”. He is incapable of doign anything else.

His voice being stolen in Stardust was the best thing that happened to him, barring what happened next.

[Author]

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