Stephen Merchant

Stephen Merchant: Aged five months

Here's Stephen Merchant - when he was just an Office junior.

The Office: Tube Talk Gold

In 1998, a young BBC employee named Stephen Merchant was tasked with producing a short film as part of a training course. While his fellow trainees shot documentaries and the like, Merchant wanted to try something different...

Round-up of 2011: Comedy

Tim Key, Tommy Tiernan, Stephen Merchant, Luke Wright and Jerry Sadowitz make our laugh-list.

Stephen Merchant 'too exhausted' to write second series

Stephen Merchant, who co-wrote The Office and Extras with Ricky Gervais, has admitted that he thinks he will struggle to pen the second series of Life's Too Short, as he is too tired.

The sitcom that appears to prove The Office's Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are creatively bankrupt, Life's Too Short distilled everything they've done before (a mockumentary format poking fun at a disabled character, with meta-jokes and celebrity cameos) but did nothing new or interesting with those ingredients. For half the seven episodes, it didn't even feel like a Warwick Davis-starring sitcom, as so much was an excuse to shoehorn in Gervais, Merchant and a guest-star-of-the-week. Things improved slightly for the last three episodes, once the storyline with Warwick's divorce became a bigger focus, but my goodwill was exhausted by then. It just wasn't insightful or clever, as everything here had been done better in Extras, and poor Warwick was forced to play himself-doing-a-David-Brent impersonation. A sore disappointment from two writers who used to demand only the best, but are now happy to devise stupid shows for their friends (see also Karl Pilkington's An Idiot Abroad).

Life's Too Short's finale was too little, too late

Life's Too Short's final episode was its strongest as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant cracked out some good gags and Warwick Davis' life slowly unravelled. But is it all too little, too late?

Life's Too Short, 1.7 - episode seven

There's a certain irony that Life's Too Short is co-produced by Backlash Productions, because it's provoked a lot of negative chatter about Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's careers.

More excruciating humour from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. They certainly succeed at painting a pathetic figure in dwarf actor Warwick Davis, the star of this "mockumentary", but whether you can bear to watch is another question. This week Warwick is beaten up by his accountant during divorce proceedings with his wife. He then tries to drum up some celebrities to come to his housewarming party, but ends up shelling out to book Cat Deeley and inevitably humiliating himself in front of his date. The slapstick provides the comedy while Warwick's eternally optimistic desperation is enough to make you wince.

Best of 2011: Comedy

The best comedy shows of 2011, including Tim Key, Tommy Tiernan, Stephen Merchant, Luke Wright and Jerry Sadowitz.