Ricky Gervais

8 times David Brent made us cringe

Slough's self-appointed 'best boss' David Brent made us cringe for three years in Ricky Gervais's genius mockumentary series, The Office. Here are his worst/best moments.

Rated or dated: The Office

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's sitcom first aired this week in 2001. Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch takes a look to see if, 15 years later, it still measures up.

15 ways The Office changed modern comedy (Link expired)

Its influence on modern comedy has been monumental. So to celebrate the show's big 15th birthday, here are 15 ways The Office changed modern comedy forever.

Can the David Brent film rehabilitate Ricky Gervais?

Comments are disabled beneath the YouTube trailer for Ricky Gervais's new comedy, David Brent: Life on the Road. That suggests the UK distributor, Entertainment One, don't want eyes wandering down and reading any anti-Gervais diatribe.

Netflix buys David Brent movie

Netflix has bought the worldwide rights to David Brent: Life On The Road.

Ricky Gervais interview

'He's this 6ft 3ins Adonis and little fat Ricky beat him in tennis!': Special Correspondents star Gervais talks about working with Eric Bana and the return of David Brent.

Very early on in Upstart Crow, a collaborative Ben Elton-William Shakespeare vehicle for the hopelessly thick and untalented David Mitchell, a member of the studio audience reacted to Liza Tarbuck just saying something in an accent, with her titty-dumplings to the fore with the kind of prolonged loud screeching fit that you or I could only hope to achieve while dousing our genitals in hydrochloric acid. My heart sank. But soon it actually began to get funny, sometimes very. The audience member had obviously been led out by an intern with the promise of a cup of tea and perhaps, actually it's to be hoped, a reassuring whisper of "you're not clever enough for this, dear". By the end, this mashup of Will's artistic frustrations in an England seething with stupidity, and as relevant to today as to 1584, had become a delight, to the extent the audience was anticipating the gags. Of a fiendishly cunning plot to frustrate young love, in which it had become necessary to procure a play-dead potion, Mitchell's brimming "I can't see how it can possibly go wrong" had much of the hubristic glee in seeing it coming of a Mainwaring, a Hancock.

Inevitable parallels - there was much God's bodikins! and gut-porridge stuff - will be drawn with Blackadder, although perhaps someone could tell me why that's in any conceivable way a bad thing. But Mr Elton has (almost) wholly redeemed himself for crimes against David Haig in the relentlessly smile-free elf'n'safety trudge that was 2013's The Wright Way, and it's nice to see he's got his brain back. And I do like Spencer Jones as Kempe, played as Ricky Gervais as David Brent - way too knowingly see-what-I-did-there, but that's how Ben rolls.

Ben Elton's Upstart Crow seems stuck in the 1980s, or 1970s, with its embarrassing canned laughter (if it's actually a studio audience, then it deserves to be confined to a can) and eagerness to please.

David Mitchell portrays a more modern William Shakespeare, who is struggling to make a name for himself - not helped by an uncaring world, and family. The Ricky Gervais mickey take character (Kempe - Spencer Jones) is faintly amusing, but Elton crams in far too many words - many of them, sadly, pathetically juvenile.

Could Ricky Gervais bring back Extras?

Could Ricky Gervais bring back Extras after David Brent's big screen return? Speaking to Digital Spy at the BAFTA TV Awards, Ashley Jensen revealed that she wouldn't need much persuading if Extras was to return in some form.

Ricky Gervais to release a David Brent single

Ricky Gervais is aiming to hit the charts as well as the box office when The Office film follow-up Life on the Road is released this summer.