Starring: Ricky Gervais

BBC Two, Thursdays, 9pm

Written and directed by The Office team of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant; Extras sees Gervais playing Andy Millman, an actor so low on the casting list he is desperately trying to get a line – any line – that he’ll lie and schmooze to endear himself to those who could make it happen.

Gervais seems to me to be a one-act man whether it’s his stand-up, sit-com or film voice-over work; he plays an ignorant, arrogant know-it-all who tends to fall on his face. So far it’s done very well for him so even if he can change the basics of the formula, why bother if it’s still working? In Extras, his lowly actor is a man who considers himself above and more deserving than his current position and will go to extremes to better himself. Mainly this involves ingratiating himself with producers and the like to the predictable (yet no less amusing) extent of public embarrassment.

The script is drenched with dark irony allowing him to insult and belittle those around him whilst coming across as a complete idiot in the process and yet he’s almost the straight-man as, in the same boat, is best friend, Maggie (Ashley Jensen), who is slightly lower on the intelligence stakes and slightly more liable to drop a faux pas than he is. A lot of the discourse is ‘in’ acting and film talk which could become slightly alienating but The Office-like pettiness and mundanity and the industry stereotypes of pretentious ‘luvvy-ness’ are universally identifiable concepts.

The big comedy hook of this series is in the ‘star’ turns he has encouraged to come on board and play pastiches of themselves. In this episode was the Ben Stiller as director of a serious bio-pic and many of the big jokes come from Andy and Maggie mocking his back catalogue and the climax of the show was Stiller’s self referencing rip-take of his own career, how much money he makes and sexy stars he’s groped.

That is going to be the main reason for me to carry on watching the rest of the series. Although I’m not a total detractor from Gervais’s work, I can take it or leave it but he has found a clever crossover that I am intrigued to see progress. Especially with the forthcoming Samuel L. Jackson episode.