You've never got your cock out on stage have you?
Life's Too Short 2013 Special Page 4
Quote: sootyj @ March 31 2013, 12:16 PM BSTYou've never got your cock out on stage have you?
Shame that they're not going to do a series 2. 
I was only half watching, but one thing that bugged me was the amount of completely stupid characters. You can have one, but here we had, at least, Cheggers, Warwick's receptionist and his accountant, all doing basically the same thing.
The receptionist and the accountant are just gratingly awful and badly written.
Cheggers though as a lost, damaged recovering alcoholic is sublime.
Gervais and Merchant can't write decent sitcoms
I think The Office was a fluke
Give it up boys
Quote: lofthouse @ March 31 2013, 1:46 PM BSTGervais and Merchant can't write decent sitcoms
I think The Office was a fluke
Give it up boys
Extras was good too.
I think Warwick's receptionist is brilliant. But the accountant does annoy me. He's just too stupid for me.
The rest though was great!
Quote: G180e @ March 31 2013, 2:06 PM BSTExtras was good too.
IMO it was terrible
But each to his own!
Redemption! If only the whole series had been about Warwick managing Cheggers, Barry and Les. Well, maybe not, but what was different about this special? I will give my opinion, for what it's worth.
I will start by offering my theory on why the series was so bad. The characters and the situations just were not believable. the accountant and the secretary did not seem like real people, more like the type of characters that would be found in the broad BBC One comedies that Gervais takes such pleasure in sneering at. The show was set-up as a mockumentry so these 2 just felt like cardboard cutouts and ruined the suspension of disbelief.
And the way that people reacted to Warwick was unbelievable, people are not nasty to the handicapped. It would be more believable if they were overly nice to him while being horrible about him behind his back. As it was, we had situations were people were being unreasonably hostile to a dwarf for no reason. That was not funny.
What made this special funny was that the other main characters were based on real people and seemed to have been constructed with the help of the actors. This also seems to have been the case with The Office. Tim, for example, was probably based on someone that Gervais knew then Martin Freeman added part of himself to the character making Tim seem like a real person we could relate to. The characters Warwick, Barry, Les and to a lesser extent Keith all seem to have benefitted from a similar process. This makes the characters more interesting and sympathetic, contrast this with the accountant and the secretary... I'm sure you'll agree that if there was a new series commissioned without these 2 but with B, K and L instead, it would be preferable to another series with the same cast.
I was wondering what happened to Val Kilmer the other day. This was okay but not great. Some good bits though I suppose.
If you're around 40-45 and you didn't enjoy this special then you don't appreciate British comedy. I once attended a Swap Shop and saw Cheggers, I'll have you know.
I found the scene with Gervais and Merchant pish though.
Quote: Godot Taxis @ February 13 2013, 11:36 AM GMTEgo.
Big factor, plus probably some unshown material that won't fit anything else but is pretty good/total crap depending on your polar opinion of Gervais.
Gervais is productive, whether some want him to be or not, or think the Beeb and others indulge him way too much. But then ego and productivity are inexrtricably linked.
Quote: Conan the uncivilized @ March 31 2013, 9:51 PM BSTWhat made this special funny was that the other main characters were based on real people and seemed to have been constructed with the help of the actors ... The characters Warwick, Barry, Les and to a lesser extent Keith all seem to have benefitted from a similar process. This makes the characters more interesting and sympathetic, contrast this with the accountant and the secretary...
That's about right.
I thought the show was funny and rather sweet.
Val Kilmer's turn as a gluttonous, ligging hasbeen was one of the most self-immolating from the Extras/Life's Too Short, so good for him.
Gervais & Merchant were hardly in the episode. But overall , it was very funny.
It was far better than I ever expected it to be. Not perfect, by any means, but enjoyable. I think sweet-natured Warwick makes a lot more sense: "nice man surrounded by idiots" works as a set-up. It used to be "monster surrounded by idiots", and you just can't care about any of them in that mix.
I agree the accountant was still atrocious, and seemed only to exist so that Davies could make the "Martin Freeman face" to camera. The cabaret show was excellent, and all three turned in outstanding performances: I fully agree that the whole series could have been about these 4 trying to get back into showbiz in their different ways, and it would have been much better.