First Look at The Ricky Gervais Show

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Last week on Late Show with David Letterman, Ricky Gervais shared this clip from his upcoming HBO animated series that uses audio from his popular podcast series with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. The show is being produced out of Wild Brain LA. The lead designer on the series is Craig Kellman.

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  • http://www.mattmos.com Matt Morris

    I’m not sure the characature style – nice drawings but why limit yourself to human representations of ricky, steve and karl, why not go for a complete departure? Gimme the bears from Matt Everitt any day – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtXl8bJJNpk&feature=related

  • Matthew

    Illustrated radio?

  • http://www.elliotelliotelliot.com Elliot Cowan

    I’m not sure quite what to say.
    They’re presenting the RG podcast in a form that can be broadcast via a visual medium.
    Um…

  • http://smarterthantheaverage.tumblr.com/ Jonathan Sloman

    Interesting to see how they’ll animate some of the podcast’s more dubious material… http://sotcaa.net/blogcaa/?p=31

  • http://www.theguysperspective.typepad.com THE GUYS

    That is really funny!!

    The animated personalities work great!

    When is this show coming out?

    We’d love to learn more about this.

  • Angry Anim

    Kellman… the best! Interesting to see him change-up his style like this. Very interesting and very cool.

  • http://lovehatecartoons.blogspot.com Ted

    So, Shorties Watching Shorties, now with a single set of unfunny Brits providing the audio instead of a smorgasbord of comedians. Great.

  • uli

    Naaah, sorry, that does not work at all for me.

  • JP

    I like the Gervais podcast, but does anyone else feel that Ricky is out of ideas? This “show” is the podcast rehashed. His books are transcripts of the podcast. And I say “podcast” – but I really mean “audiobook”. They’re not free anymore. Talk about milking a joke for all it’s worth!

  • chris ure

    Kellman + Gervais= What’s not to love???

  • http://robcatview.blogspot.com robcat2075

    hmmm…. The animation seemed not to be helping much.

    Is that the whole format of the show, a comics’ roundtable?

    I suppose people who are already his fans might like it, but if they’ve already heard the jokes on his podcast…?

  • Ricardo

    “So, Shorties Watching Shorties, now with a single set of unfunny Brits providing the audio instead of a smorgasbord of comedians. Great.”

    Ditto.

  • Karl Hungus

    The audio is off.

  • Sara H.

    I like the audio, but I’m not sure that the animation is really bringing much if anything to it..

    I’d much rather listen podcast while working on my own animation than spending my time watching this, ya know?

  • http://deleted OtherDan

    funny! Someone actually having fun with animation.

  • Thomas

    I’m shocked at how uninspired and flat this is. I’ve heard these podcasts, so I’m hoping this is a test, with old audio. As a test, I’d give it a D.

    Nothing to see here.

  • http://www.youtube.com/chipCHIPLEY Mike Hollingsworth

    I’m a fan of the podcast (I’ve heard ‘em all) and I’m very excited to see them brought to life by the talented team over at Wild Brain. And to compare this show to Shorties watching Shorties is a damn shame. The designs on that show were garbage and the comedy was disjointed. At least with the same three guys all the time on Pilkington it’ll be cohesive. Remember those two ugly babies who tied Shorties together? They made me go pro abortion!

  • Ricardo

    I thought Shorties was actually rather well done. I didn’t get any sense of it being disjointed and the animation not terrific but it was decent. I especially liked how sometimes non-speaking characters were added to provide more gags. It was good idea to provide mutiple comedians because it would add variety. I do agree about the babies being rather pointless to the show but hey, they are still funnier then this crap.

  • Robiscus

    Listen:
    One of our prime directives while working on this show was to NOT turn it into “Shorties Watching Shorties”. The clip here belies that fact.
    There is no revelation to the comparison. We were concerned about it from the very start.

    So just give us the benefit of the doubt and watch the first episode. You’ll be able to make an informed opinion only then… and not after watching 40 seconds.

  • http://www.cannedgeek.com/ Kyle

    I dig the illustrations of what the dude is talking about (the bungie jumping, baby out of the dead lady ect), but the animated performance of the speaking characters could be so much more fun given the energy of the voices.

  • http://www.mukpuddy.blogspot.com Mukpuddy

    Here here!

    I liked it!

  • Blake

    it would have been better getting aardman to do them as animals or weird creatures or something, and then going off on some real flights of visual fancy, but i guess the budget didnt stretch quite that far eh ricky? nicely done but have to say doesnt add that much to the audio, so ultimately a bit pointless. looks like a bit of a low budget cash-in job.

  • Ricardo

    Robiscus:

    SWS was brought up because it’s basically the same concept, no one is being accused of plagerism. Anyway, I am sorry to say that the I will be not tuning in because I don’t find these people funny in the first place and the animation dosen’t help.

  • Fanboy

    I agree with the other commentors! They should have been animals! Turn everything into an animal! And also…this shouldn’t have been done in the first place. That money woulda been better spent on re-re-remastering Pinnochio.

  • http://jakeart.weebly.com Batfan

    Hey all! I just wrapped on this project. Great working with Craig and all the other peeps over at W!ldBrain Inc. Although people may not like the content at times…(I do) I can assure you all that the animation is top notch and resembles that of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends :) This clip does not do it justice :) Thanks!

  • Rene Ramos

    Hopefully it does well, since the material can be interpreted in very funny material. Gervais has been bombing on every american thing he appears in. The office is very successful probably because he’s behind the scenes. Could there be a secret backlash against him for being a foreigner? he’s a very smart fellow…

  • http://zeteos.blogspot.com/ mick

    I like them lads and their chats. This cartoon brings nothing new to the funny because the material is not meant for cartooning… here is an example of something that was written to be visual… and i am guessing that was the aim for Mr gervais’ thing

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fhdw9HkfMU

    So far as this latest Ricky gervais incarnation I reckon the cartoons look grand and the material is funny but neither benefits from the other.

  • speakillkid

    I like Ricky Gervais and am not saying he stole this idea but this is an awful lot like the show on spill.com, except they do with movie reviews. They just sit around having a hilarious conversation and then it’s animated.