The Ricky Gervais Show

If you aren’t already listening to the podcast of The Ricky Gervais Show, you need to start immediately. I have been a big fan of Ricky Gervais ever since first seeing The Office on the BBC while visiting the UK. Tremendously funny, fresh writing were par for the course on this show, harking back to the classic feel of This is Spinal Tap. I give Steve Carell et al a lot of credit for bringing the show over here. They seem to have gotten most (not all) of the same cues from the original series. So as you can imagine, I was overjoyed when I heard that Gervais would be doing his own podcast. His latest show Extras hadn’t made it over to the U.S. in any form other than bit torrent downloads and I was yearning for some more great writing from the master.

The podcast doesn’t disappoint. Hosted by Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington it consists of stories, conversation and a lot of laughing. While it does venture away from being scripted like the television shows, it offers a great feeling of improvisation that makes for some crippling belly laughs. Typically they are a result of Gervais himself killing himself laughing at co-host Karl Pilkington. I don’t want to try and describe the dynamic too much because I feel that it would take away from the novelty. I would recommend that you head on over to iTunes and listen for yourself.