There are some lovely moments in Ricky Gervais's gently observed comedy tonight as Derek (Gervais) and the residents of Broad Hill nursing home enjoy a day trip to the seaside with the compliments of the long-suffering Dougie (Karl Pilkington). While they are away attention turns to soft-hearted care assistant Hannah (Kerry Godliman), forced to reconsider her own achievements when an old, and far more successful, schoolmate turns up at the home to her relegate her mother to the sidelines of her life.

Derek's twinkly music set the scene in the customary manner, for what turned out to be the most striking episode yet.

I don't know about you, but I think I've adapted to the slow not-much-happens nature of these 23-minute tableaus now. The three mini-themes of this week included Derek's discovery of an ailing bird, which meant he called an emergency ambulance and had to be bailed out by one of the residents, someone evidently still inspired by his Cocoon-esque turn on the dance floor last week, but equally surprised actually to be given a line to say by Gervais. Who knows - another resident might get a line in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, it was time for Hannah to reassess her relationship with the frustrated Tom, and take issue with some of resident Marge's grasping relatives, clearly only there to lay claim to the ring she still kept on her finger. Cue Dougie (Karl Pilkington) getting himself into a protective rage: "I want to tell Marge, 'Buy gin, bingo, piss it up the wall, anything just so Shelly can't have it.'"

Every week, to KP, the best lines, and they're in safe hands, as he continues to prove himself a surprisingly effective actor, by just being himself - this week popping into people's rooms to collect stuff for jumble - asking "are they really going to miss that?" as he holds up a plastic Prince Charles.

The central montage was as soft and fluffy as anything we've seen yet, with Derek's tears starting to flow... "I'd rather be sad than anyone else," he says after the loss of Marge.

It's a bit weird, though - while Dougie and Hannah continue to reveal themselves and gradually get under my skin, I find Derek himself becoming less and less central to the theme of the show. It'll be interesting to see how this balance pans out by the end of the series - we're already half-way through.

The occasional glimpses of the brilliant show Derek could have been come together tonight. It's the funniest episode so far, mainly thanks to generous helpings of Karl Pilkington. His rants as care-home handyman Dougie are delivered with perfect weariness, and tonight's storylines allow his exasperation to boil over nicely.

There's more plot than usual, too: Derek rescues a baby bird and wants Hannah to call Bill Oddie. Hannah's boyfriend Tom is frustrated because she keeps cancelling dates. And elderly resident Marge is visited by her uncaring daughter - tonight's straw baddie. Obviously, everything is a bit spoilt by a soppy music montage (the show's centre is softer than blancmange), but there's a dash of real emotion, too, and at one stage a hilarious meeting of WH Auden and Take a Break magazine.

What, then of the fictional hero of Derek (Channel 4), who has unspecified learning difficulties? If Ricky Gervais's role in The Office was a masterpiece of the comedy of embarrassment, his title role in Derek is an exercise in sentimental manipulation.

In the third episode last night, Derek, conceived as a perpetually gentle and innocent man, stumbled around the care home where he works, while the rapacious daughter of an old lady who lives there counted the days till her death so she can get hold of her diamond ring. What happened to the ring was the plot line, but Derek kept coming round again for us viewers to feel sorry for him, while a piano soundtrack played sad music.
Gervais stuck to the single note of pathos, wandering about with a moribund fledgling chick in his hand or wailing, "I love working here but I'm always sad," as another old woman died.
Other characters trotted by as one-trick ponies. The care assistant Hannah (Kerry Godliman) is another Dawn from The Office; Kev (David Earl) is addicted to self-deluding sexual boasting. Dougie the handyman (Karl Pilkington with funny hair) is there to give people their comeuppance.

As an exponent of look-at-me humour, Ricky Gervais has come to rival Doris Day or Lucille Ball. His master in sentimentality, though, must be Norman Wisdom, who at least varied his appeal by a bit of energetic slapstick. In Fifties terms Norman was "a bit simple"; Derek, in today's social-work-speak, is "vulnerable" - which actually makes him invulnerable to audience criticism. It would be like kicking the Andrex puppy.

Kerry Godliman interview

Kerry Godliman on Derek co-stars Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington, and why her career has taken a nosedive...

Ahead of the first episode of his latest C4 offering, Derek, Ricky Gervais claimed that releasing a new TV show was like 'landing in Normandy and feeling the bullets rain down'. Now, I'm not going to suggest Ricky has been spending a bit too much time in Hollywood, but does he seriously think he suffers for his art like World War II troops suffered on those beaches? It's all very worrying.

The only reason Derek isn't the most schmaltzy and emotionally manipulative programme I've ever seen is because Simon Cowell got there first. But then, Ricky has been displaying a siege mentality lately that would make even Sir Alex Ferguson blush.

For someone who professes not to care what people think, he's spending an awful lot of time on Twitter retweeting praise for Derek from starstruck followers who probably only tweeted in the first place in the hope that he would retweet it. Stranger still, Ricky and his showbiz chums have decided the 'knives are out' in the industry, particularly among the nation's TV critics. I've asked around and the general feedback is no such vendetta exists.

Sure, there is bemusement that Ricky appears to feel he has divine immunity from criticism - ironic really, given that when he's feeling in a particularly trolling mood Ricky likes to tell people God doesn't exist.

Most critics actually reacted fairly favourably to the pilot episode of Derek, which makes Ricky's decision to come out fighting now all the more baffling. Unless of course the bravado is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that a) Derek isn't really that controversial and b) the full series isn't really that good. It's by no means the worst programme I have ever seen.

There are some gentle laughs to be had. Kerry Godliman is superb as Hannah, the hybrid of Tim and Dawn from The Office, who runs the care home. And Karl Pilkington is fabulous at being Karl Pilkington in a bad wig as Dougie the caretaker. It is also refreshingly free of awkward celebrity cameos - although with Ricky's track record we can't rule out Michael Parkinson popping up in episode six trying to sell life insurance to the home's OAP residents.

Derek though takes schmaltz too far. It's basically a half-hour version of that pet charity campaign that featured a shaggy old dog shivering in the rain whimpering, 'Nobody wants you when you're old'. But instead of appealing for cash, Ricky is seeking credit. He'd love to be lauded for bravely tackling dangerous issues, when all he's really doing is throwing up a series of fairly obvious and nauseatingly sentimental crowd-pleasers with a side order of mawkish piano music.

No one is going to knock him for saying kindness is magic, or standing up for autistic people, or being nice about old people, or giving da yoof a second chance, or raging against busybody council bureaucrats. But he's hardly taxing himself - or us - here.

He's writing by bumper sticker. And while it might be magical for Ricky's ego if we were to continue to kindly avoid the massive elephant in that care home sitting room, I really can't bring myself to do it.

Because the simple fact is this. As well as being written by, performed by, directed by and edited by Ricky Gervais, Derek is also spoiled by him. His hammy performance as Derek Noakes is the biggest letdown of the entire show. Moreover, as a character, Derek is the least believable and least interesting thing in it.

If he didn't show up in the second series I don't think the show would suffer for it. I'd even go so far as to call any enforced absence a kindness.

Review: Karl Pilkington is the saving grace

Once again, Karl Pilkington triumphed by taking handyman Dougie's lines and making them his own. When he drove everyone to the library where "some of them don't even get a book", his stoic stupefaction was moving and far more effective than being beaten over the head with Derek's goodliness.

Ricky Gervais is declining to play safe with his latest bittersweet comedy, if comedy is the right term. Comedy drama? I don't know. Perhaps there is a new genre here. Either way Derek (Wednesday, Channel 4) is about a man with learning difficulties who works in an old people's home. And you don't laugh at Derek, you laugh with him.

He may have a slack jaw and bad haircut but he is sympathetic and kind. In some ways he reminds me of the Peter Sellers character in Being There: the idiot savant who stumbles on profound truths, or at least says things which make you wonder a little (such as "Why aren't pigs called hamsters?").

As with The Office and Extras there are poignant moments. And there is pathos, too. The documentary style used in those earlier shows is also deployed here, with characters giving little one-to-one interviews away from the others. Hannah (Kerry Godliman) as the care worker running the home provides a necessary naturalistic balance to the grotesques around her.

Karl Pilkington plays a stroppy version of himself as the caretaker Dougie (in real life Pilkington has a deep suspicion of old people). And a new character has been introduced since the pilot last year: the sex-obsessed, trainwreck Kev (David Earl). Kev is Derek's friend, and as Hannah said: "If it weren't for Derek, Kev would have ended up dead in a skip."

When an accountant from the council came to inspect the home with a view to cutting its budget there were bound to be awkward moments - this was, after all, a comic device that echoed all the way back to the health inspector episode of Fawlty Towers - but I didn't see the Kev appearance coming. Bustled out of the way when the accountant arrived, he had taken his clothes off and gone for a "quick nap" in one of the beds while the elderly resident was still in the room.

In his stand up shows Gervais sometimes teases his audience about their nervousness at his politically incorrect jokes. It's OK, he implies, it is safe to laugh because I'm being postmodern and ironic. This territory is slightly less safe - laughing at the people laughing at Derek - but it is, nevertheless, still safe to laugh.

If it's Ricky Gervais's curse to be judged against the success of The Office, I can't see his new comedy series, Derek, helping, being neither funny nor clever enough. Set in a retirement home and starring Gervais as a man with learning difficulties, it was a half-hour fight between caricatures of sentimentality and coarseness. I had hoped Gervais's performance as bobbing, gurning Derek might have become more nuanced since last year's pilot but it hadn't. Karl Pilkington fared well enough as the janitor but his bad wig spoke for the whole enterprise.

Ricky Gervais shouldn't have taken the title role

Kerry Godliman and Karl Pilkington shine in the new series however Ricky Gervais shouldn't have taken the title role.