Enjoyed Extras very much. Was impressed Gervais could create a similar yet different character without really making you think of Brent.
The girl who plays his best mate now has a role on Ugly Betty, BTW.
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>>>>>>Maybe we keep steeling your ideas because they're better than the ones American TV writers can come up with.
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>>>>>Maybe so, so why not just leave it at that? By that token they won't come up with any new ideas for the extended season.
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>>>>But to the BBC two seasons is 12 episodes! I'm a big Ricky Gervais fan, but the Amercian version of the Office - with almost 70 episodes and counting - is considerably more prolific, every bit as funny, and a pretty good example of a good idea being carried on with respect to the original idea but definitely without relying on recycling the original material.
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>>>The Office was meant as a spoof fly-on-the-wall. Gervais realised you can't continue such a scenario indefinitely. I think the US version has digressed from the scenario? BTW, there was a feature-length Xmas special of the Office a few years ago. Did you catch it?
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>>The Fly on the Wall thing is used less and less - mostly for the opportunity for a character to break the fourth wall.
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>>Saw the UK Office Xmas thing and loved it like I loved the rest. I think Gervais could have done 23 episode seasons and still kept the quality up, though I think the US version has better supporting cast and the direction Steve Carroll has taken the boss gives him more room for more stories.
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>I guess Gervais saw it as a docu and that's that - not to be redev'd into a sit-com. That way it loses a lot of the cringe factor, pathos and such, eg Brent mugging to camera and doing stuff just cos the camera's there.
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>Maybe he didn't have the energy to dev 24 episodes as in the USA (and considering that US sit coms are written by huge teams - lots of x-fertilisation of ideas and energy gen'd - in the UK they can't afford big teams and sit-coms are written by indiv's or duos typically).
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>BTW, did you see his follow-up series - "Extras" (2 seasons)?
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
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Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
