Ricky Gervais as 'Derek'

SexyGreyFox · 16 Apr 2012 at 08:01

Mark A said:
Well I don't think that Karl is a scripted character at all.

Go back to the very first XFM shows where he was ocassionally asked stuff and he gave stupid replies which were very genuine.
When Merchant & Gervais heard some of this garbage they knew they had got a little goldmine in their company and as the show progressed the character of Karl progressed into total stupidity.
It's obvious that some of the sketches were (not scripted) but talked out about before the show aired.
There are lots of other stuff where it was obvious he hadn't thought of that one liner on the spot because they were genius.
The Idiot Abroad series had some great camera angles to get jokes over which were supposed to be 'off the cuff'.
One such scene is him eating Monster Munch sitting on the pavement while his driver ate some live insects, cameras are panning back and forward in perfect time for the scene which wouldn't happen if he just made it up on the spot.
OR he did make it up on the spot and the producer decided to make a scene around it so what we see is not exactly how it happened.
This is how great comedy works.
I just have a problem with people who think he is genuinely thick and yes, go back on this forum and you will see posters who genuinely believe that they think Karl believes the Monkey News scripts.
The guy is a genius and I'm a massive fan.

realBabelfish · 16 Apr 2012 at 09:59

phil675 said:
After The Office, nothing Gervais has been involved in has been worth watching, IMO.

extras was better than the office, imo.

the recent one with warwick davis was good at times and painful at others.

opethdisciple · 16 Apr 2012 at 15:49

Hmm I watched half of this and thought it was cringely poor.

Rachmaninov · 16 Apr 2012 at 16:14

I think we can accept that Karl was just a random radio producer when they first met, so he's become extremely successful whether he's a character or not. Made a great transition to TV presenting and acting.

SexyGreyFox · 16 Apr 2012 at 18:14

Rachmaninov said:
was just a random radio producer

I have a problem with this statement and others have also said it on here that he was just a Radio Producer.
This job alone should tell you he had a brain and XFM wouldn't put a cleaner in the job.

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/radio_producer_job_description.htm

http://www.creativeskillset.org/radio/careers/jobs/article_7763_1.asp

Mark A · 16 Apr 2012 at 18:35

He was a producer back when XFM was just starting out and was a very small wasn't he? It would be a lot harder to get that job now with the station being fairly big.

SexyGreyFox · 16 Apr 2012 at 18:45

Mark A said:
He was a producer back when XFM was just starting out and was a very small wasn't he? It would be a lot harder to get that job now with the station being fairly big.

So you believe a nobody could walk into a Radio Producers job?
Even when our local rubbish radio stations BBC Stoke and Signal Radio started the radio producers were hand picked from scores of highly qualified hopefuls.
A Radio Producer is a make or break job for the station that anybody putting money into wouldn't choose the cleaner or somebody who runs a mobile disco.

Mark A · 16 Apr 2012 at 21:47

I don't know what you mean by a nobody. All I mean is that I don't think the fact he had a producer job on a very small station proves he isn't the way he comes across on the XFM show.

One · 16 Apr 2012 at 21:59

Dimple said:
I have a problem with this statement and others have also said it on here that he was just a Radio Producer.
This job alone should tell you he had a brain and XFM wouldn't put a cleaner in the job.

http://www.prospects.ac.uk/radio_producer_job_description.htm

http://www.creativeskillset.org/radio/careers/jobs/article_7763_1.asp

You don't think somebody can do a certain type of job properly but still be a bit stupid? You only have to look in the house of commons for several hundred examples.

He wasn't Mr. XFM, he produced the Saturday lunchtime show for two hours with (at the time) a couple of nobodies presenting. From the podcast it seems like he used to do something relatively easy in the station in a tiny office, and then got promoted to the Saturday afternoon show, propelled into fame by working with the now famous Ricky and Steve and since then has been instructed to play his character a bit more.

I think we see quite a genuine Karl in the idiot abroad episodes, although you can tell the podcasts are played a bit, Ricky bringing up stuff that previously got a lot of laughs etc.

Edit- it actually seems this might be exactly what you are saying

SexyGreyFox · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:17

desires said:
You don't think somebody can do a certain type of job properly but still be a bit stupid?

I 100% know that people with very high education can be stupid.

I firmly believe that Karl is a bit dim when it comes to a lot of things and 100% believe he has daft ideas about things and I have never wavered from this thought.
However, listening to XFM it is plain to hear that Karl was being manipulated into the Karl 'character' and got more outlandish while still being very funny.
Even though I have watched Idiot Abroad at least 5 times you can still spot the setups but some viewers took it straight in.
For instance 'Ricky's got a dwarf mate, I'll ring him up' and then he gets ****ged off by Warwick Davies who I already knew was a good friend of his and was taking the pee for a TV show.
I find it hard to believe that people can't see the progression.

EDIT -
Just read your edit and I think we're on the same page

Robosapien · 16 Apr 2012 at 22:30

These guys deserve the Nobel Prize for exaggerating their stupidity lol. Genius. Bleeding genius. God I was so taken in! Thank God there are more intelligent people who can see through the sherade and correct us all on our misconstrued perceptions. Who is the true stupid person, Pilkington or the general public who mock him? I think I know the answer, do you?

SexyGreyFox · 16 Apr 2012 at 23:11

Robosapien said:
These guys deserve the Nobel Prize for exaggerating their stupidity lol. Genius. Bleeding genius. God I was so taken in! Thank God there are more intelligent people who can see through the sherade and correct us all on our misconstrued perceptions. Who is the true stupid person, Pilkington or the general public who mock him? I think I know the answer, do you?

Don't knock yourself, it's got nothing to do with intelligence, you just have to listen to the evolution of a normal bloke with stupid ideas being turned into a character that we all love and he plays up to it.
Who knows, perhaps Gervais and Merchant can TALK HIM INTO ANOTHER SERIES even though he refused to do a second.

ElvisFan · 16 Apr 2012 at 23:39

I just watched it on 4od and thought it was beautiful.

Karl's acting was absolutely bang on target.

trentlad · 16 Apr 2012 at 23:46

Spektor said:
Oh, Derek was awesome, Hope it gets a season to round it off.

Sorry what? This isn't the beginning of a new season? Was this just a one off?

Westie · 17 Apr 2012 at 03:13

Gonna watch this when i get home! I Listen to every podcast audio book Karl and Ricky have made while I work and its made my days a lot happier! Absolutely love what they do so am looking forward to this!

bledd · 17 Apr 2012 at 10:01

trentlad said:
Sorry what? This isn't the beginning of a new season? Was this just a one off?

Just looked it up and it seems so, just a one off :/

Bubo · 17 Apr 2012 at 11:06

Just got round to watching this. I thought it was excellant, you could only not like this program if you went in with any preconcieved ideas about Ricky Gervais expecting it to be cynical and mocking. It was the complete opposite of this. I thought it was brave for Ricky to try this character and he played it admirably. Why should Ricky Gervais be excluded from acting any character he wants, including someone with learning difficulties? Only if you are a Daily Mail reader would you automatically assume that if Gervais is playing such a character he can only be doing it to mock them. I hope this gets a series, it seems geared up for celeb cameos with the autograph hunting angle, which is the only thing non original in this pilot, and that is no bad thing anyway.

ThePirateHulk · 19 Apr 2012 at 04:20

Dimple said:
The Idiot Abroad series had some great camera angles to get jokes over which were supposed to be 'off the cuff'.
One such scene is him eating Monster Munch sitting on the pavement while his driver ate some live insects, cameras are panning back and forward in perfect time for the scene which wouldn't happen if he just made it up on the spot.
OR he did make it up on the spot and the producer decided to make a scene around it so what we see is not exactly how it happened.
This is how great comedy works.

Yes, because on a high budget documentary like this they would never have thought to have brought along more than one camera so they could have one on Karl and one on what Karl was observing and then using basic editing techniques to portray Karls reaction to what was going on around him.

That would NEVER have happened.

SexyGreyFox · 19 Apr 2012 at 07:56

ThePirateHulk said:
Yes, because on a high budget documentary like this they would never have thought to have brought along more than one camera so they could have one on Karl and one on what Karl was observing and then using basic editing techniques to portray Karls reaction to what was going on around him.

That would NEVER have happened.

Carry on believing the myth.
The guy is a great comedian, end of.
Yes he has weird ideas about life but he knows exactly how to get a laugh out of it.
I'm also 100% convinced he doesn't like the places he went to because I know people like that, to quote my daughter standing in front of the Pyramids "Bricks, what's the point?".
You should have caught on after the first series when they had the talk:
"Karl, we know you hated going on those trips but we've made bags of money. We're going to pretend that you're so thick & clueless that we're going to trick you into a second series but most students and some adults will fall for it and don't forget to keep mentioning it in the series".
And then comedy history is made ..................

Mark A · 19 Apr 2012 at 16:06

trentlad said:
Sorry what? This isn't the beginning of a new season? Was this just a one off?

I was just looking at the TV listing and wondering why it wasn't on today.

So why did they show a blooper that wasn't even in the show?