So, let's talk The Ricky Gervais Show. Some of you may remember me going through all three seasons of An Idiot Abroad last year, a show in which "round-headed buffoon" Karl Pilkington travels the world in order to complain about it. Karl first rose to prominence on The Ricky Gervais Show, a podcast in which Ricky, Karl, and Stephen Merchant had "a series of pointless conversations." (Typing that, I realize how redundant it is.)
Anyway, what always set The Ricky Gervais Show apart from the tens of thousands of other podcasts out there for me was that it was one of the first ones. I believe they started to record it way back in something like 2002, before "podcast" was even a term. They called their recordings "audiobooks," in fact. And then in 2010 or so, HBO decided to air the podcasts, animating all of the bullshit that the trio would discuss. Or rather, HBO spliced up a bunch of their podcasts into segments and then edited those segments together into animated episodes of roughly equal length.
The animated series lasted for three seasons and as someone who'd already heard several of the podcasts, I wasn't a big fan back in college. The first season in particular felt like a way to cheapen the jokes and stories with crude animation and goofy sound effects; I quit watching it after several episodes, and truth be told I have no idea if I ended up missing any material.
But! Seven years later, I gave Season 2 a try - why not? - and sure enough, I liked it plenty. I've long forgotten all of the material from the original podcasts anyway by now, or at least the Season 2 stuff, if I'd ever even heard it in the first place.
So yeah - good stuff! A bit dated already, and my favorite "oh wow this really is an old show" moment may have been when Karl predicted or at least described the concept of augmented reality only for Ricky and Stephen to tear the idea to shreds making fun of it as completely pointless with zero appeal.
Unfortunately, HBO no longer carries the show, even on HBO Go (or HBO Now - what's the difference anyway? serious question) due to, I'm sure, licensing issues. But the good news is that the thing is just all over the Internet. Like, even YouTube seems to have multiple "copies" of every episode. It's just not a show worth protecting from piracy anymore. Check it out if you want - I'm sure this is a much more "limited appeal" program.
I remember this show! I watched/listened through all of them a few years ago actually when I went on a Karl Pilkington kick. I think I found them all on YouTube without there being any copyright infringement concerns.
ReplyDeleteStrange. You'd think it would be so easy for HBO to hold onto this, but no... They sort of set it out onto a raft and pushed it off into the sea of the internet. What's next? Fight of the Conchords!
As for HBO Go and HBO Now... I believe the difference is in how you pay. HBO Go is the on-demand service designed to accompany HBO-cable subscribers, whereas HBO Now is for those who've "cut the cord" and just want to sign up for HBO without the need for a cable service (a la Netflix).
Don't quote me on this, though.