1.16.2007

Extras, Gervais's Second Album (16: Unedited)

Most fans of the BBC sitcom The Office will adamantly argue that the British version is much better than its American remake, not only because its funnier, but because the style of slow-paced storytelling and British witticisms work better in an English setting. The character the show is based around, the annoying boss David Brent, was invented and best acted by Ricky Gervais, the show’s co-writer and producer.

In the special features of The Office, Gervais and co-creator Steven Merchant explain why the show ended where it did (after only two seasons and a special), leaving fans without much else to chew on. The pair did a series of free podcasts, which were basically hour-long segments of Gervais making fun of their friend Karl Pilkington, but they didn’t have the creative acting and storytelling provided by a TV series. However, in 2005, HBO picked the pair up to do a semi-autobiographical recount of how The Office came to be, with a few details changed, and simply called Extras.

Unlike the realistic documentary style of The Office, which allowed characters to take asides and speak to the camera, Extras is meant to be entirely fictional. We learn about Andy, played by Ricky Gervais, Maggie, played by Ashley Jensen, and Andy’s unnamed Agent, played by co-creator Steven Merchant, by watching their interactions with others and the featured celebrities, much like a standard drama.

However, Extras is still unlike the fast-paced American sitcoms about making TV, like Studio 60. Extras instead resembles the slow movement of Wernam-Hogg’s cubicle space in The Office. The show’s transitions are a guy moving a light around or some actors walking to the catering table, the actors and extras take their time getting to places on the set, and the crews huddle around in quiet discussion. This movement takes the drama away from getting something done in time and puts it on the people in the show. The people answering phones at Wernam-Hogg are the actors looking over scripts on the set.

Most of the show is about two “background artists,” or film extras, named Andy and Maggie. Andy spends most of the show trying to get speaking lines, get his face into frame, and talk to the celebrities on-set in a seemingly vain attempt to network. His agent is completely useless- he greets Andy with a newly discovered calculator trick that spells out “boobs” upside-down on the screen- so he butts himself into conversations with producers and tries to impress people like Patrick Stewart in order to advance his acting career.

The six episodes in the season are titled by the A-list celebrities that star in them; Kate Winslet, Ben Stiller, Ross Kemp, Samuel L. Jackson, Les Dennis, and Patrick Stewart. These actors and actresses are not the center focus of the episode, but instead appear in the cinematic sequences and the awkward conversations between Andy and Maggie. Maggie’s discussing her new boyfriend’s fetish with talking dirty on the phone when Kate Winslet walks up in a nun’s wardrobe with some suggestions to spice up the phone sex.

Also similar to The Office, with an extra page taken from Curb Your Enthusiasm, is the awkward moments and uncomfortable confrontations between characters. Maggie frequently makes childish observations about race and sexuality, oftentimes when speaking to someone of that nationality or gender.

The six episodes may not seem like much, but the special features more than make the DVD set worth its list price. Both discs include blooper reels, which are mostly Ricky Gervais sabotaging a scene by making everyone laugh (just like in The Office) and redoing the scene thirty times. Disc one also has some deleted scenes, but the real bonus features are on disc two; “Finding Leo” is a panicked Gervais and Merchant trying to find Leonardo DiCaprio’s agent to fill a spot in an episode originally casted for Jude Law. The segment is about 10 minutes and absolutely hilarious as Merchant and Gervais try to figure out how they made it this far in show business when they can’t even dial outside the hotel room and only manage to be slightly productive- by doodling a monster with a phallic nose.

Also on disc two is the half-hour and insightful interview of Gervais and Merchant called “The Difficult Second Album,” where the pair talks about the creation of Extras and what it’s like to work with A-list celebrities. Merchant explains that the show uses the celebrities to add realism to the show and that they come with certain baggage that can be used to help the show’s humor, “you can play with the image they already have, and it’s like a shortcut to comedy.”

The second season of Extras started airing on Sunday, but because the series follows a greater narrative, viewers should consider picking up the first season before turning their TVs onto HBO. If you’ve already memorized the lyrics to “Freelove Freeway,” consider seeing Gervais’s other embarrassing character and awkward humor.