I’m wondering what people with HBO thought of the first episodes last night. I have always enjoyed CYE, primarily because it has this ur-Seinfeld quality of being downright painful to watch. Pairing it with Ricky Gervais ought to be inspired because that was the main quality of ‘The Office,” along with offering serious satire of what passes for employee relations and management-speak today. On the basis of the first episodes, I thought CYE was the weaker of the two. Perhaps familiarity is the problem. Larry David seemed to be going through the motions, with the storylines of scalping tickets for the synagogue and the squabble over the sandwich being a bit more contrived than usual. He may be setting something up for the rest of the season. The running gag about ‘The Producers’ climaxed perfectly at the end of the last season, so maybe the adoption storyline is heading in the same direction.
‘Extras’ was pitch-perfect. Gervais’s ability to alternate between being the life of the party and being an embarrassed git is as strong as ever. The material on religion was hysterical, and Kate Winslett nailed all her lines. It is interesting that, despite the fact that Gervais and the BBC must have known that ‘Extras’ would be shown in the US, a number of the references ought to be bewildering to any but a British audience. Who, outside of England, knows who Jeremy Clarkson is, or cares, for that matter? I sort of like that parochialism. It is early days, but the series is low-key enough that it should be able to survive on the limited premise of sitting around a film studio every week and commenting sarcastically on the star.