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The Ricky Gervais Show isn’t really The Ricky Gervais Show, according to the man himself.
“It’s The Karl Pilkington Show, make no mistake about that,” Gervais said.
So who the hell is Karl Pilkington?
“An absolute idiot,” Gervais said.
There’s no quick way to explain this, so let’s get the basics out of the way.
The Ricky Gervais Show is a new reality-animation series — “realimation” as Gervais calls it — featuring the voices of Gervais (creator and star of the original U.K. version The Office and Extras), his comedic collaborator Stephen Merch ant and Pilkington. It debuts Friday, Feb. 19 on HBO Canada.
The 13-episode project takes existing hours of conversations between Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington that have been available via podcast for years, and fleshes out the talk with retro-style animation. The podcasts, which earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for most downloads, already have transformed Pilkington into a reluctant celebrity in Britain.
“We met him at a local radio station,” Gervais explained. “We worked there for about a year, then we went away and did The Office. We went back a few years later and then we were big shots, weren’t we?
“We didn’t want to press the buttons ourselves, so they gave us this little round-headed minion who worked there, and he was doing his job and not impressed with us at all. Now and again, we said, ‘Karl, what do you think?’ And it was comedy gold. It was just incredible.”
We probably all know someone a little like Pilkington. Under-educated but over-opinionated. Largely humourless but unintentionally hilarious. And uninsultable.
Gervais and Merchant call Pilkington a moron, and worse, to his face. But Pilkington prattles on, sometimes confused and occasionally annoyed, but oblivious to the comedy he’s creating and no less entrenched in his own bizarre beliefs.
“(Pilkington’s) serious understanding of evolution is that it went, ‘Germ, fish, mermaid, man,’ ” Merchant said.
Gervais recalled a discussion with Pilkington about some B-level celebrity who was famous mainly because his father had been famous.
“Karl said, ‘You could say the same about Jesus,’ ” said Gervais, unable to control his trademark high-pitched squeal of laughter.
“People ask me, ‘Is Karl really like that?’ And I say, ‘Well, if it’s an act, he keeps it up 24/7.’ ”
Our exploitation radar is beeping a bit, but Gervais and Merchant insist Pilkington is not some special-needs individual whose limitations are being mocked. He’s just a different cat, who has his own life and his own philosophies, and his world has not changed much — apart from some financial security, we assume — since the podcasts began.
“Joking aside, I don’t think he is an idiot,” Gervais said. “I think he’s smart, and he’s good at some stuff. I genuinely believe he is a comedy genius, whether he knows it or not.
“He’s a cross between a friend and a pet and a golden goose. I just go, ‘Karl, talk,’ and I take the lion’s share. He’s the funniest man I’ve ever met.”
By BILL HARRIS, QMI Agency
