The Ricky Gervais Show – The Complete First Season (2010/Warner Brothers DVD)

Picture: B-     Sound: C     Extras: C     Episodes: B+

This disc collects the first season run of HBO’s Ricky Gervais Show - a program that takes audio clips from Ricky’s now several year old podcasts and melds them freshly created animation.

Simple as it is, I must admit that it is quite hilarious.

The podcasts involve a series of discussions between Ricky and his cohorts, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. The conversations typically revolve around prodding Karl with a few questions and letting things go from there, but there are a few standard segments as well, such as Karl's Diary and Monkey News.

Often these chats go to bizarre places that have little to do with the original question, and we as the audience are left to ponder where exactly these thoughts are coming from. It’s actually quite hilarious, as well as fascinating, and the episodes breeze right along.

The image is presented in anamorphically enhanced widescreen, with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1. The picture quality is decent, with good use of color, and is rather sharp. The animation, though simple, is perfectly adequate in helping to sell what it is you’re laughing at. Were it more fluid and not as understated, it would begin to work against the show, disrupting it’s careful balance.

The sound is a bit lacking, but sounds typical of a podcast. Strangely, it is presented here in a 5.1 Dolby mix, but considering that almost all of the sound is sourced from a single room mic setup, there is little need for multi-channel mixing in this particular case.

Extra content includes a short piece of animation for the Channel 4 Comedy Gala, and a storyboard for one of the episodes.

I would recommend this program to any fans of Ricky Gervais and his other shows, Extras and The Office. The laughs here are infectious, and there is a lot of replay value on these discs.

-   David Milchick