Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

[Borracho]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

G-Man wrote: Alas, it turns out, Gervais hit his high-water mark right there, at the beginning.

Gervais was 40 at the time of The Office.

[G-Man]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

I know, but his previous claim to fame was having two non-hit singles out. Was he known for anything much before The Office?

[Hamish! Dougal!]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

He managed Suede, but dropped them from a height not long before they released 'Animal Nitrate'.

[Mitch]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

Did he? There's my fact of the day sorted.

Before The Office he had his own chat-show on Channel 4. The point of which seemed to be to get some innocuous C-lister on (like Johnny Ball) and just be rude to them.

[Jah Womble]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

Really? Fucking hell. Apart from on here, where did you hear that? Frankly I'm a bit disturbed by the idea of anyone thinking this is anything other than appalling on pretty much every level.

What is this weird hypnotic hold that Ricky Gervais has over so many people? He's a chancer, a preening intellectual pygmy, a genuinely loathsome human being (as his adventures on Twitter make clear) and everything he's done since Series 1 of "The Office" has been dreadfully hamfisted, nakedly derivative and often quite mindbogglingly crass. And yet, as "Derek" seems to prove, there are no depths (morally or in terms of quality) to which he cannot sink without an alarming number of otherwise intelligent people cheering him on. It's all very odd.

Your second para answers your first line. And the jury's still out from my perspective - I still haven't seen it. But - as you'll see from my earlier posts - his 'previous' doesn't fill me with a great deal of confidence.

Gervais worked in the office next to me at Talkback around the time of The 11 o'clock Show, and was politeness personified until he got a sniff of success. Prior to this, he'd been the comic 'turn' on the fledgling Xfm just up the road, but was sacked when the station went down the Capital sewer in 1998. (Naturally, they quickly re-employed him once he'd gained a bit of success...) Before this, of course, was his shortlived music career.

[dalliance]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

I don't really get Derek at all, although it is a lot less objectionable than the really, really terrible Life Is Short. Aside from the issues with where Derek is positioned between sneering and sympathetic, the biggest mistake Gervais makes is believing that he can actually act and carry off a character that is certainly more complex than any he has ever played.

Gervais has got away with a lot of his actual acting performances because he has, sensibly, rarely tried to play anyone who is not simply himself as he is in real life. It's like Courtney Love in The People vs Larry Flynt: she knew she could play a drugged up, fucked up groupie girl as that was her life. She sensibly didn't try and follow up and get herself a Merchant Ivory gig.

The one other thing about Derek which is a very minor positive compared to everything he has done since The Office is the lack of celebrity guests. It at least tries to stand up on its own legs whereas Extras, in particular, masked much of its flabbiness by tossing in celeb cameos who played against type and masked the general weakness of the scripts. If I think back to Extras, all I can remember is a few of those cameos - nothing from the Gervais character or the Maggie one.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

There's still 3 episodes to go, I'm sure there's still time to fit in at least one jarring cameo.

[garcia]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

the funniest scene i can remember from extras was the bit with david bowie.

the office was absolutely brilliant, in fairness, though as dalliance says, it maybe wasn't plain at the time the extent to which the character of brent was based on gervais himself.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

Well, like all of us, I suppose, there are different sides to him. I'm a big fan of the XFM shows and the podcasts with Steve and Karl - probably the thing which is most Gervais as himself, and at times he seems self-aware, and makes intelligent observations, but at other times he comes across as arrogant and a bully. It doesn't seem like a stretch to suggest that the last 10 years have fed that latter side of him.

[nmrfox]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

Have just watched Derek for the first time and have to say that was one of the most embarrassing, unfunny piles of shite that I have seen for a long long time.

[Tony C]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

There was an episode of 'Extras' that involved Kate Winslet insisting that she had to make a Holocaust film in order to get an Oscar. It was actually really good - playing "against type" as dalliance said earlier, but not lazily so, making a valid point about the film community.

It was the exception, though.

'Life's Too Short' was lamentable.

[dalliance]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

Didn't they get her to swear like a docker in that same episode to play up the against type part though?

Gervais adores Curb Your Enthusiasm and tries to ape much of what Larry David does, but he failed utterly to appreciate how brilliantly Curb used celebs like Ben Stiller or Ted Danson. Larry David ruthlessly stripped away their supposed specialness and redrew them as ordinary, petty and small-minded as the next man on the street, differentiated from each other and from Larry only by their individual neurosis.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

Tony C wrote:
'Life's Too Short' was lamentable.

I liked the main guy, Warwick Davies.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

he's back ...

[Bored Of Education]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

[quote=Jah Womble post=763669]

Gervais worked in the office next to me at Talkback around the time of The 11 o'clock Show, and was politeness personified until he got a sniff of success.

Gervais was terrible on the 11 o'clock show. That he came out with 'The Office' after that was amazing. Mind you, pretty much everyone was shit on that. It was, though, the platform for Ali G. I am not sure whether that confirms the previous remark or not.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ricky Gervais's "Derek"

I don't know if it's just that after 11 episodes you've come to accept that Gervais is not playing Derek for cheap pratfalls but that he is a genuinely portrayed character, but fuck me this was one of the best pieces of television I've seen all year, in terms of both writing and acting.