Hilariously smarmy stars on Ricky Gervais’s Extras

This weekend I rented season two of Extras, thinking it’d be fun to watch episodes from the couch like a normal person, instead of continuing my weirdly cheap & haphazard patching of mismatched YouTube clips from the show.

For those in the dark, Extras is Ricky Gervais’s next endeavor following The Office, and — as with anything he sets his mind to — it is very, very funny. In it, Gervais plays Andy Millman, who in season 1 bounces from part to part as an extra, and in season 2 catches a break acting in & writing for an embarrassingly tacky sitcom.

A huge draw of the show is each episode’s guest star. Big names make cameos as exaggeratedly smarmy versions of themselves (Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Chris Martin, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, to name a few). Check out these cringe-worthy scenes, for example, from Daniel Radcliffe’s guest spot in season 2, episode 3.

Season two also boasts hilarious appearances from good-looks-obsessed Orlando Bloom (view clip), and David Bowie, who upon meeting Millman in a VIP lounge, is inspired to write a song about him.



So good. I’ve had that “See his pug-nosed face” chorus in my head all morning. And Gervais’s particular brand of self-deprecating humor just kills me every time.

As he did with The Office, Gervais produced just two seasons of Extras, which are both available on DVD (and which I highly recommend). See the Amazon links below for more info.