Ricky Gervais a victim of his own reputation? Surely nobody would bill this as being even vaguely connected with the art of comedy if he wasn't involved?
I can understand going heavy on the pathos and not making Derek's behaviour the punchline, I can understand the tinkly piano instead of canned laughter but they surely weren't even trying for comic moments here? Scenes like the one with the inspector interrogating Karl Pilkington's caretaker character screamed out for comic misunderstandings that never came, and all the unfortunate coincidences were played down by the script. Kev's smut is far too predictable and badly written for me to believe it was seriously intended to be funny (makes Mrs Brown seem like Malcom Tucker, and there are no decent "straight man" overreactions to compensate) and at the other end of the scale lines like "Brown, blue and earth or something." are too subtle to actually yield laughs. There were about three lines of clear verbal comedy in half an hour: probably a similar number to a typical episode of EastEnders.
Oh, and Ricky. He gurns a lot, sounds so much like Ricky Gervais the supporting cast have to keep pointing out how nice he is to deflect from Ricky's usual arsehole persona, and his train of thought was usually too unintelligible to be funny. I think this episode removes all doubt that he's sincere in his attempts not to make a mockery of Derek, not least because of the number of clunky expository lines towards the end, but it also makes a mockery of its billing as comedy drama.
Kerry Godliman is fantastic as an actor and Karl is good too, but it's straight up drama here.
Think I might give that Scottish politician thing a try next week.
