I sat down to watch the Extra’s Christmas special with a feeling of excitement, the rest of the Christmas TV schedule was pretty bad ( The Manor Born!!!!) and the hype for Extra’s had certainly made an impact. In retrospect I think this must have been a slight case of Christmas cabin fever (stuck in the same house as your parents for a whole week!!) because Extra’s is a program I watch if I’m in but I don’t go out of my way to watch it. The big joke in Extra’s is watching real life celebrities appear as grotesque versions of themselves but it seems to me this one trick has been done to many times now and has a hint of “look at my famous friends” about it. Much more entertaining are the celebrities who are no longer famous like “Barry” from Eastenders, Les Dennis, Keith Chegwin etc.
The celebrities in this episode are Clive Owen (saying he would act with Maggie Jacob’s (Ashley Jenson) because he would never pay for a prostitute that ugly, come on I’m Clive Owen), Gordon Ramsey swearing and being himself, George Michael cruising in the park and Lionel Blair saying the only thing he looked forward to was death.
After the fantastic and unexpected success of the office Christmas special, Gervais and Merchant had a lot to live up to, they also stated that this would be the last episode of Extra’s. Unfortunately I found it very long and very boring. The episode was a long 1 hour 30 minutes, this would have been fine if there wasn’t such a dearth of laughs and funny moments. Gervais and Merchant tried to repeat the trick of the office Christmas special and go for the sentimental heart moving story line but instead ended up with a tedious, predictable story line which resulted in an ending which the only reason you were cheering is because the episode had finally finished. For much of the episode the funniest bits of the show was the sketch show on the program that Andy Tillman (Gervais) created and stares in, quite ironic when considering Gervais uses that part of the show to highlight the poor quality of comedy (and their catch phrases)on our TV’s at the moment.
The main story lines were Andy Tillman’s agent (Stephen Merchant) is sacked and then he gets a job with Barry and Dean Gaffney at Car Phone warehouse.
Maggie Jacob’s career is in terminal decline and has to give up being an extra and face the ignominy of being a toilet cleaner and move into a very small flat. The motive behind this story line is to contrast Andy Tillman’s lack of appreciation of his success and wealth. Andy Tillman then quits his successful show and tells the audience they are all morons for laughing at daft catch phrases. Tillman then tries to get parts with prestige and at the same time his one time friend who is also a chubby person is becoming a big Hollywood star, much to the chargrin of Andy. This goes on for about an hour with Andy treating his best friend Maggie and everyone else very badly and he is then forced to take cheap roles (like being a slug in doctor who etc) to keep his profile in the public eye, this culminating in him appearing on celebrity Big Brother with people like Chico (time), Lionel Blair, Lisa Scott Lee and a gaggle of unknown people. He then chastises the watching public for watching such rubbish and apologies to Maggie (this is supposedly the big heart warming moment because Gervais is doing his convincing almost crying face). He walks out and then all the papers want him, just what he wants, except he has realised that being a good friend is more important and walks out the back door.
Overall the show really lacked a lot of laughs and was at least 30 minutes to long, the attempt at a sentimental story line was to clunky and obvious. In the office you felt sympathy for David Brent because although he was a big head, insulting, full of business gobbledegook, you felt he was more stupid than malicious, you felt that he meant well and the Dawn and Tim story had been simmering for all 2 series. Andy Tillman is a moaner, moaning about having to go on big brother to earn some money and then complaining because he can’t do it, some of us watching have proper jobs which involve going to work for 8 hours, 5 days a week, the character isn’t going to get sympathy just because he has to dress up as a slug on doctor who. A mixture of obvious sentimental plotting and the characters not deserving your sympathy left these Christmas special falling flat on its face, slap bang into the Christmas pudding like a tired/tipsy grand parent.
You left mulling over the fact it was funny seeing Dean Gaffney on the screen and maybe have a chortle or two and some of the star walk turns.
So if you missed it, you didn’t miss much and let’s hope Gervais and Merchant get back on form and produce something which Andy Tillman dreamed about doing.
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4 comments:
You are very thick. The episode is about the emptiness of celebrity, and how wrong we are to celebrate it. The fact that you find the sitcom bits funniest tells its own story.
I know what the episode is about you moron. the emptiness of celebrity, no not at all celebrity, he was having a go at people who just want to be famous rather than being famous for things they have done.
The problem was is he did it so heavy handedly that i found it boring and thought it wasn't that clever to shoot at such an obvious target.
If you think that episode of Extras was moving and clever then you are probably one of the people who still think Extras is good.
Andy Tillman? HAHAHAHAHA
That season finale was one of the best I have ever seen so there....
Certainly not one of the best. A little bit depressing, actually.
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