Derek

I could be wrong but I think the message Ricky Gervais wants us to take away from this episode is that selfishness is a bad thing. It's a sentiment rammed home in every other scene and backed up with nuclear levels of Coldplay. As the old folk go for a trip to the seaside, sweet, selfless Hannah stays behind, because someone has to help a new resident settle in. Then the week's glaring baddie hoves into view as a snooty relative (a former schoolmate of Hannah) daring to sneer at her job.

Would anyone, however self-centred, walk into a care home and sneer at the staff for being failures? Luckily, there are better helpings of comedy at the beach.

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.

Ricky Gervais's programme continues. Tonight, Derek is played by a sad-eyed puppy in a paper hat. He calls an ambulance when he finds an injured baby bird in the garden, and later there's a death for him to get sad and sweetly confused about. The character of Kev, with his exact mimicking of Gervais's stand-up voice, is a constant reminder of who you're really watching, so it's impossible to feel anything but bowel-twistingly awkward. Gervais playing humble is as convincing as David Cameron eating a pasty.

Gross-out sex obsessive Kev is the character who sticks out like a sore thumb in Ricky Gervais's otherwise sensitive comedy drama. But then hitting raw nerves is a Gervais speciality and tonight the odious Kev sets out to persuade Derek to lick a toad. Until a baby bird in need of urgent medical care attracts our ingenuous hero's attention. It all makes for a bizarre mix of the sentimental and the sick-making, with just enough laughter to keep it on track.

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...

In the third episode of Ricky Gervais's opinion-splitting, gentle comedy, Derek (Gervais) finds a baby bird which has fallen from a tree and tries to save its life. It's also date night for Tom (Brett Goldstein) and Hannah (standout performer, Kerry Godliman) - except she's forgotten about it. Expect a very tender denouement.

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.