Podcast Review: The Ricky Gervais Guide Promotion Episodes

May 15, 2010
Alex Sharp

Ricky Gervais Guide to Previews are Free and Funny - Cleavers (Flickr Creative Commons)

Ten promotional episodes offer over an hour happy listening as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant coax and provoke Karl Pilkington.

People are used to laughing due to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. They co-wrote and directed The Office and Extras for the BBC, and are among the producers of the American version of The Office. The magic of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast comes from the feeling of laughing with Gervais and Merchant. Gervais issues pronouncements, argues, and laughs to the point that listeners hear him struggling to breathe. Merchant muses and wonders, asks questions, and tries to reason with the real star of the podcast, Karl Pilkington.

The Ricky Gervais Guide To...

The currently available Ricky Gervais podcasts (on Itunes) are the ten free promotional episodes for the Ricky Gervais Guide audiobooks. The audiobooks are collected podcast conversations between Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington on the following topics:

medicine
natural history
the arts
philosophy
the English
society
law and order
the future
the human body
the Earth
the World Cup.

The promotional podcasts are short conversations with Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington reflecting on the content of the previously recorded audiobooks. According to the podcast, The Ricky Gervais Guide to the Earth will be the last in the series.

Conversations Between Karl Pilkington, Steve Merchant, and Ricky Gervais

Although conversations between Gervais and Merchant are entertaining, the real fun of the podcasts is the bewilderment, fury, and confusion that is born during conversations between the three men. Karl Pilkington, one quickly realizes, is predestined to be cornered by Gervais and Merchant. Although it seems like Gervais is the antagonist who is determined to lure Pilkington into conversational avenues that most people would not enter, Merchant has his fun as well.

In Guide to Society, Gervais and Merchant pose as a couple who want to adopt a child. Pilkington, who previously in the same podcast bitterly complained, "You've gone too far the other way. Why do you always have to go the other way?", poses as the administrator evaluating the adoption, and he asks about the improvisationalized couple's employment.

"I'm a rapist," Merchant deadpans, as Gervais laughes and adds, in a falsetto, "I dispose of the bodies."

Merchant stifles giggles, saying, "I should clarify. I'm rapist-murderer." Pilkington, well used to them, answers, "All right, fill out this form."

Conversations of Friendship in the Guide to Podcasts

Although Pilkington's daily life is mocked and his philosophies are ridiculed, there is a sense of actual friendship and affection in throughout each podcast. When they discuss the people who take the newspaper versions of the St. George's flag at put them in the window in Guide to England, all three lament the newspaper flags for different reasons.

Merchant, who praises the excited patriotism generated from football ("That's when you see the St. George's flag up. There's no jingoism involved.") comments that the flag in window is "slightly ruined by the small logo that says, 'The Sun'." Pilkington objects to people who put up the paper flags, saying, "They have the flag in the window [because] they are the curtains in the house." Gervais agrees, advising that if , "There are 30 satellite dishes, 12 flags, and a couple of pit bulls...keep driving."

Ttotal length of all ten podcasts is about 80 minutes, and the promise of more fun awaits with the audiobooks. The free episodes are effective in the goal of enticing people to buy the full versions, which are available on Itunes and Audible.

Out Now: The Ricky Gervais Guide to Podcast Information

The Ricky Gervais Guides all star Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington. Audible.com attributes the production credits to Glyn Huges.

The podcasts were released on the following dates: