Ricky Gervais

"Karl! You are living in a cartoon world!" shrieked Ricky Gervais, in the very first of the podcasts he recorded with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. They all are now, HBO having taken the original recordings and added Hanna-Barbera-ish visuals to what they introduce, in a portentously grand American voice, as "a series of pointless conversations". Gervais looks like a knock-off Fred Flintstone and Stephen Merchant like some amiable gump out of a Seventies road-safety film, while Pilkington is just a baffled pink golf ball. If you missed the originals, Pilkington is the point of thing - his stupefied take on the world the catalyst for Merchant and Gervais's flights of fantasy (and delighted incredulity). "I've seen him blossom from an idiot into an imbecile," said Gervais fondly as they started out, though half the fun of it is that in between absurdities, Pilkington will occasionally stumble on an undeniable truth: "If you haven't bungee-jumped by the time you're 78," he pointed out flatly, "you're not going to do it."

The animation has allowed HBO to fill out the more florid phrases, so when Gervais reacted to a particularly groggy aperçu from Pilkington by saying "he sounds like he was found in a glacier and thawed out", you get a little sequence showing the defrosting. This quite often adds to the comedy of the original. But there are times when you sense a loss too, particularly in the yelping reactions that follow some particularly dopey remark from Pilkington. On the ear, these eruptions of hilarity were very infectious, and the deliberate simplicity of the animation occasionally seems to mask the expressiveness of the voice, rather than match it. It is still funny, though, not to mention a very canny bit of recycling.

I've never really seen the point in Ricky Gervais's podcasts: him and his mates Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington rambling on about nothing in particular. Well, mainly Pilkington, who just gets hold of an idea and runs off with it, like a naughty puppy.

But I get this even less: it's just the same podcasts, animated. So you've got Ricky, Stephen and Karl, turned into what look like characters from the Flintstones, rambling on about nothing in particular. Occasionally one of Pilkington's wayward thoughts - babies being born to dying 78-year-old women, for example - is animated, too. That's very lazy TV, isn't it? Radio with pictures. Maybe they should animate The Today Programme. I'd like to see John Humphrys turned into a Flintstone.

I guess it only works if you're amused by Karl's idiotic thought-streams. Ricky and Stephen clearly are: they spend most of it giggling hysterics. It leaves me cold.

Have a laugh on Ricky Gervais

Gervais laughing is the sound of the largest, smuggest gas leak in history.

Such is Ricky Gervais's cultural currency in the US that they're even hungry for his podcasts. The Ricky Gervais Show is the audio from Gervais's popular chats with fellow writer/director Stephen Merchant and their oddball former co-worker Karl Pilkington, fleshed out in cartoon form. If it sounds slender, be advised the material is strangely absorbing: with Gervais and Merchant set up to goad and mock him, Pilkington is given free rein to mumble his thoughts on topics from travel to newspapers, a kind of inspired rubbish.

Ricky Gervais, his co-writer Stephen Merchant and hapless producer Karl Pilkington have reunited to make these HBO-produced animated versions of their popular podcasts. It largely centres upon inane chatter with Gervais and Merchant encouraging naïve Pilkington to offer up his absurd life theories. The smug duo then mock him. Tonight Pilkington's subjects include an amusing riff on monkeys in space and a theory that 78-year-old humans should give birth as they die. Unfortunately what might work as pointless banter for the ears gains little when in cartoon form.

The collected musings of Ricky Gervais, ]Stephen Merchant and pal Karl Pilkington broke the Guinness world record for most downloaded podcast in 2007, so it's shrewd of HBO to recycle the audio and lay it over an animation. Here the trio are rendered like they're from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon and it's certainly a fun way to hear their banter once more. It will also put Pilkington on the map: he's supremely effective as the straight man while Gervais and Merchant mess around like naughty schoolboys.

TV has always helped itself to the best of other media, but this is new: a cartoon version of the hit podcast by Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington. The 60s-style animations are beautifully done, with Gervais resembling (as he says) a cross between Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone. But really, it should be called The Karl Pilkington Show. It's his deadpan idiocy that drives the fun, his riffs including the thesis that by 1900 everything worthwhile had already been invented (planes just take us to places we shouldn't visit). The other two mock and taunt him to the point of cruelty ("You are brain-dead! You are a maniac!"). It's like a surreal, blokeish pub conversation between old friends, overheard by Hanna-Barbera, and very funny.

If you are a fan of Ricky Gervais then you're probably also a fan of his podcasts. They became the most downloaded podcasts of all time, with something ridiculous like eight million downloads.

Technology has yet to come up with a word for what we should call it when old podcasts are turned into cartoons and then shown on TV.

If you watched Channel 4's Comedy Gala on Easter Monday - when Ricky, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington contributed their thoughts on swimming with dolphins - you'll have seen how they, and their pointless ramblings, have been turned into Hanna-Barbera style animation. In short, it's genius.

The double bill of episodes shown tonight to kick off the series was recorded back in 2005 but given a new lease of life with the addition of pictures - and with Ricky Gervais drawn as a modern-day Fred Flintstone, they couldn't be fresher or funnier.

If this is all new to you, you'll find out tonight why Pilkington - the pair's former producer at radio station Xfm with the alleged perfectly round head - has been described by Gervais as the funniest man on the planet.

His deadpan musings on dinosaurs, monkeys in space, haunted houses and sexy metal pants are the backbone to these chats, while the other two laugh hysterically and shout him down as a gullible buffoon.

And now, for the first time, you can actually see what Karl's fantasies might actually look like. His mad theory on why air travel is intrinsically wrong, may also be of some comfort now to the millions who were affected by the volcano cloud.

The series started in the US a couple of months ago. What the Americans will have made to references to Derek Acorah, heaven only knows. Still, who cares? These three belong to us - a trio of national treasures. Fact.

Interview: Ricky Gervais, Comedian and Filmmaker

It takes a lot to dwarf comedy hero Ricky Gervais. But the creator of The Office and Extras is happy to concede that Karl Pilkington eclipsed both him and Stephen Merchant when appointed as sound engineer on their XFM radio show.