The Ricky Gervais Show is a semi-frequent podcast that features Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. The first two are notable from their roles in the original BBC version of The Office and the subsequent series Extras, as well as from other small roles here and there. In between all of this, throughout 2006 and occasionally in 2007, the trio recorded over a dozen hours of what might very well be some of the most consistently hilarious drivel you've ever heard. And drivel here is not used pejoratively. Mel Brooks often took the "insult" that his movies were in bad taste as a compliment. That was the point of them. And, ultimately, the point of the Gervais podcasts is to provide a showcase for the crazy rantings of Pilkington, a former radio producer who is fond of thinking of ways that the human race can be "improved". It's usually the obvious things--you know, like solving population control by having everybody implanted with a fetus that is born at the same time as you die, or making death less worrisome by reversing the aging process such that everyone dies when they return to nothingness, but they don't know what's going on because they're babies, and so on. Better still are the stories of his upbringing, such as one in which he talks about his first girlfriend from when he was seven. Pilkington talks about accidentally tearing her dress, then being confronted when in the bathroom by another seven year old who tells Karl, "You're out of order," to which Pilkington asks, "Why are you getting involved?" The subsequent brawl ends with the other boy's tooth getting chipped on the sink, and Gervais declaims the absurdity of the entire spectacle, thinking it an episode right out of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Such is the stuff of Gervais's podcast. Performing an inventory of the most memorable bits of the podcast does little service to anyone, and such an inventory has just been placed on iTunes for free download. Suffice it to say that the setup for the podcast is little like anything else out there right now. Most of Pilkington's interests--nature, evolution, freaks, and the terrible plight of the overabundance of words in the English language--are not exactly the most "commercial" material out there, and it's hard to imagine an American equivalent of the podcast. Nevertheless, the show is terribly funny, particularly in the interplay between Gervais, Pilkington, and Merchant. Pilkington's role is apparent: he is the fool, the jester, the ignoramus who continually proves just how much danger a little knowledge can bring about. Gervais, contrary to the role he played in The Office, turns out to be a rather urbane and sophisticated man whose constant amusement with Pilkington's antics is equally balanced with his infuriation at Pilkington's ludicrous ideas. His indignation is often amusing, but it fulfills another important function: it gives us permission to laugh. Gervais often gets less laughs than the other participants in the podcast--which he freely acknowledges--but his attitude allows us to laugh at Pilkington's antics without feeling guilty about it, or without feeling stupid for finding his idiocy funny. He lends gravitas to the proceedings. And Merchant's role is critical as well: he often plays the superego to Pilkington's id and Gervais's ego, mediating between the two. He is often the most quick-witted of the three, frequently chiming in with a perfectly-timed wisecrack. At one point, when Karl is describing a film he wants to make about a woman who agrees to have half her lover's brain implanted in her head, he remarks that he made this up all on his own. Merchant responds, "So it's not based on a true story then?" And Merchant occasionally tells stories about his travels, love life, childhood, etc., that usually turn out to be utterly hilarious. This is no solo act, but rather a perfectly balanced group, each of which plays an indispensable role that contributes to the whole. There is a rhythm here, an interplay, that is at once combustible and stable, smart and stupid, friendly and angry. These three man have managed to do something that most artists struggle to do all their lives: they have created something unique. It's not at all like the self-humiliation comedy of Ricky Gervais's other works, for one. In fact, I am hard-pressed to find any other work that even remotely resembles the Gervais podcasts. Perhaps there is such a thing, in minstrelsy or something else. Nevertheless, in a world where everything these days seems to be a copy of a copy of a copy, the show is both reasonably original and something else, something even more rare--it's alive. The show often just seems like we're listening to life happen, which is also very difficult to pull off in the context of art and entertainment. Put simply, there is something really novel about this podcast in a way that is often difficult to articulate, aside from that it's funny, which is apparent. There is, as it turns out, something more to it than that.
All in all, these podcasts have brought me many hours of joy, and I strongly encourage that everyone give them a shot.
