TV review: Ricky Gervais, the tragic king of comedy

It's tragic that the glittering celebration of international sporting prowess and drugs designed to disappear without trace into the bloodstream is reduced, for this viewer at least, into a petty annoyance.

The one thing that I'm seriously committed to on television is Coronation Street, and clearly I'm not supposed to mind at all that instead of seeing what happens to a large group of often unappealing, generally doomed people, I have to watch human bodies being forced to jump higher and run faster than our good maker designed them to.

Instead of the comfort of watching bodies like Ken Barlow's, the middle of which has become increasingly like those bolsters that the French use instead of pillows, one is forced to look at youth at its most disgusting perfection.

So I boycotted the live opening ceremony of the Olympics. To rephrase that, I didn't get around to getting up in the middle of the night to watch it, and for the next two weeks I'm considering boycotting TV One whenever possible as well, unless it's the finals of the 100 metres, because my sporting attention span can cope with that one.

I began my gesture of supreme defiance on Saturday night by watching the Extras Christmas Special, or as it should be known here given how long it took for us to see it, the Extras Matariki Special.

I wanted a laugh and counted on Ricky Gervais to give me one.

Wrong. I didn't get many laughs out of the Extras Christmas Special. Instead I had all the other reactions that good comedy extricates from the viewer - my toes curled, my skin crept, and I felt overwhelming sadness.

I really admired Gervais for what he attempted to do - indeed succeeded in doing - with this special, which was to show the mean-spirited downside of success.

Anyone involved in the arts world - and, to keep to the Olympics theme, the sporting world - knows how it's often easier to enjoy someone's failure than their success. A small amount of success is fine, as long as it's not too much.

There's that sometimes irrational feeling that someone else's success means that there is less to go around for others.

While some people deal with personal success with a self-deprecation and grace that allow others to celebrate for them, in many cases the lack of generosity of others means the succeeder becomes both emotionally guarded and lonely.

As the obsession with the lives of celebrities shows, celebrities hang out with other celebrities. What is often not shown is that there is a ruthless pecking order and today's celebrity might well not be recognised by his ex-peers when things turn tough.

In both of his hugely successful television series - The Office and Extras - Gervais plays a character who is very difficult to like.

At least in The Office you can dislike his persona but at the same time feel sympathy for his excruciating awfulness.

Not so in Extras, where Gervais' character, Andy Millman, doesn't seem to have a decent side at all - it's only his honesty (hideous in its callousness) that could possibly redeem him.

We join him this time when he's had a double-edged success in an awful sitcom for which he's obliged to wear a bad wig, talk in a high-pitched annoying voice and, worst of all, say his catch-phrase, "Are you having a laugh?" at least once every episode.

Andy Millman knows that his 15 minutes are bittersweet ones. In true Gervais style, he sets out not to make the best of them, but to make the worst.

His best friend Maggie is the first to suffer. He'd cheerfully dump her if he didn't need a reasonably personable companion at the restaurants that now find him a seat even on the busiest of nights.

He moves on from his hopeless manager, treats the extras, who are searching for the opportunity that he himself got, with utmost foulness, and treats his fans with barely disguised disdain.

The whole time his haunted eyes show he knows all this will be over almost before it began.

I do love Maggie. She's the star of this special, just sweet enough, just bewildered enough.

The scene in which the leading man in the show she's an extra in refuses to allow her to play the part of a prostitute, because even his character wouldn't be desperate enough to sleep with someone who looked like her, is one of the cruellest I've seen on television and her response was brilliant - once you're at the bottom, there's nothing much anyone can do to make it worse.

This really was a programme which made you examine very closely what being a celebrity is all about.

It ran in perfect parallel with Paris Hilton's attempt at mocking herself by running for president, asking Americans to vote for her not because she's got a policy, or even a brain, but because she's "hot".

How can Hilton joke about herself when she's such a joke already? And worst of all, how can she get so much attention for doing it?

It just goes to show how much she needs us to like her. And if we can't like her, then we can do the next best thing - recognise her.

Perhaps after all, I will watch the Olympics. My refusal to countenance it makes me feel depressingly joyless. At least in its own way it's good clean fun, and the people involved in the races have worked hard.

Though none of them will ever get the instant face recognition that Paris has, they've earned what attention we do give them.

And it's not as if there's any competition for our attention on other channels - none will be showing anything anywhere near the equal of Saturday night's cruel, cold comedy. This was Gervais being Paris Hilton's polar opposite.

This isn't comedy that has you waiting for a punchline, wiping away the tears of mirth as someone slips on a banana skin. This is comedy that has a freezing hand which clamps down on your heart.

This is comedy just a hair's breadth away from tragedy. This is comedy of the best sort.

But, oh dear. I think with Wellington slipping slowly down its saturated hills, I'd rather have had a laugh.

*What did you think of the Extras Christmas Special? Post your comments below.

- © Fairfax NZ News