The Ricky Gervais Show: Difference between revisions

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''The Ricky Gervais Show'' is an [[Podcast|online radio show]] starring comedians [[Ricky Gervais]] and [[Stephen Merchant]] (of ''[[The Office]]'' fame) and producer [[An Idiot Abroad|Karl Pilkington]]. The show started as a weekly radio show on UK digital music station XFM, but has gone online since 2005. It is the most popular podcast in the world, holding the Guinness record for most downloaded podcast. Recently, [[HBO]] has begun to air an [[Animated Adaptation]] of the podcast.

 

The show basically has the format of a [[Seinfeldian Conversation]]: Ricky, Stephen and Karl talk about life in general, the news, amusing anecdotes and sometimes even a little life philosophy. The show started with just Ricky and Stephen, but eventually, Karl was included into the show, since Ricky and Stephen realized from talking to him that [[Cloudcuckoolander|Karl's... interesting worldview]] was a source of humor they just ''had'' to exploit. Recently, they produced a series called "The Ricky Gervais Guide to..." and focused on topics like Medicine, England, Society, the Future, and the Human Body, though the discussions rarely remained that focused.

{{tropelist}}

* [[Actor Allusion]]: In the animated episode "Comic Relief", when Steve is telling a story about shopping for records in a thrift shop, he is shown picking up a Seona Dancing record--that being [[Old Shame|the boy band Ricky Gervais belonged to]] when he was young.

* [[Animated Adaptation]]: Originally started as a radio show, then a podcast. It basically just animates the stories the characters tell on the show, with [[Hilarity Ensues|truly hilarious results]].

* [[Art Evolution]]: Starting with the second season of the cartoon, the animation started to gain more [[Ren and Stimpy|Kricfalusi-style]] elements and become more expressive and lively.

* [[Ascended Extra]]: Karl. He started as producer of the show and was not on the air at all, but Ricky and Stephen then started actually talking to him and realized he was ''comedy gold''. He's become pretty much everyone's favorite participant in the show, which isn't surprising since Ricky can become an [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]] in a matter of seconds and Stephen often acts as [[The Watson]]. It's reached the point where in the animated adaptation, only a few non-Karl bits (ie stories and such told exclusively by Ricky and/or Stephen with little or no interjection by Karl) have appeared.

* [[Author Appeal]]: Both of Karl's movie pitches revolve around someone having their brain (or part of their brain) transplanted into the body of another person.

** Karl also uses the phrase "knocking about" a lot, even in situations where he is trying to make a serious point. Naturally this renders whatever he's saying hilarious.

** Lampshaded by Steve at one point:

* [[Centipede's Dilemma]]: Many times Karl will be telling a story and Ricky and Stephen call him on the possibility of said scenario working. This leads to some very, VERY outlandish explanations.

* [[Characterization Marches On]]: When Paul "The Party Animal" Parker was first mentioned in the cartoon, he was imagined as a schoolkid wearing bowling shoes and a Doctor Who scarf who was asked to plan his school's parties. From his second appearance, where he was discovered to be an adult, he was reinvented into a Ferris Bueller-esque legit party animal.

** One woman said that she was "frightened" by a picture of him on a subway because he looked absolutely gargantuan compared to everyone else.

* [[Cloudcuckooland]]: The Manchester estate where Karl grew up. So far, we've heard of "the lady whose mom was a witch", Shorts Man (who used short shorts to flash people), a woman who kept a horse in her house and had a son who chased cars, Jimmy the Hat (who never wore a hat), Scruffy Sandra ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]), a man who tattooed himself and accordingly had terrible tattoos on his dominant arm, and Karl's uncle Alf who had a mattress in the back of his van but slept in a rubber dinghy. Among many others.

* [[Crying Wolf]]: Occasionally becomes a problem for Karl; he spends so much time talking about stuff which is obviously ludicrous nonsense that when he actually says something that has the element of truth to it (or is indeed just entirely accurate), Steve and Ricky are automatically primed to reject it out of hand.

* [[Deranged Animation]]: It's just as deraged as [[Regular Show]]'s animation.

* [[Dope Slap]]: Karl is CONSTANTLY in the receiving end of the verbal version of these.

* [[Double Take]]: Sometimes, the things Karl says will drive Ricky and Stephen to baffled, stupefied silence.

** Every so often, Karl's lack of political correctness about certain issues will prompt Ricky and Steve -- themselves not exactly shy about playing with politically incorrect humour -- to react in a "Whoa! Hold on there!" fashion.

** Probably the best example is when Karl is talking when he went out with a girl who he later found out had a (supposedly) terminal illness. He broke up with her soon after because he didn't see the point in spending time and money on her when "she's going to die on me". Ricky literally screams "Oh God!" in disgust before calming down and saying, even though he understood what Karl meant, you still can't say something like that in public.

** One example is when Karl is reciting the opening to [[The Elephant Man]], stating that John Merrick came to have his deformity because his Mother was scared/trampled by an elephant when she was pregnant with him. Steve immediately states he's wrong, when it is in fact true (in a way at least).

** In a 2002 episode, when Karl presents a 'logic' puzzle to Ricky and Steve (nutshell: man turns on light before he goes to bed, why?). The answer is that he is a lighthouse keeper, with Ricky blasting him about the fact that the light is off at day and calling him a buffoon. When Steve (and hopefully ANYONE listening) realises that Karl is ''right'', this leads him to cheer jubilantly on-air.

* [[Eccentric Townsfolk]]: Karl's stories about his childhood feature a lot of these.

* [[The Eeyore]]: Karl. Ricky often gets angry at him for complaining so much when, as Ricky sees it, he has close to no problems or responsibilities.

* [[Everything Is Better With Monkeys]]: [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Monkey News]], a section of the show where Karl tells a news story which stars a monkey. Highlights include a fire-fighting monkey and a space monkey who committed suicide after not adapting to life back on earth.

** Karl's story about Ollie the Chimp [[wikipedia:Oliver (chimpanzee)|actually had some factual basis]], but of course he buried it in nonsense.

** [[Aluminum Christmas Trees|Chimps actually]] ''[[Aluminum Christmas Trees|were]]'' [[wikipedia:Animals in space|shot into space]], but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as Karl made it out to be. His story of the retirement home for Ham and Enos is bollocks too: Ham lived like a celebrity at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. (and then later, the North Carolina Zoo) before dying in 1982. Enos died of dysentery in 1962, little over a year after he went into space.

* [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You]]: Karl's feelings on Australia, naming several of the (many) dangerous species that live there as to why he refuses to go there. Especially camping.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: "Don't be ignorant." -Karl, near the end of season 1.

** Ricky seemed genuinely astonished and bemused when Karl, without a trace of irony, said that "I think I think more than most people."

'''Karl:''' [[Comically Missing the Point|No, I haven't mentioned the jellyfish today.]] }}

** Ricky himself has sometimes gotten basic facts wrong in the course of berating Karl, or claimed that even the bits of his stories that are true couldn't happen. The latter part, at least, can possibly be justified through Karl's poor and inarticulate method of telling stories, which can often make it very difficult to tell what is fact, what is fact he's exaggerated and / or somehow distorted, and what's just completely made-up. Ricky even said that [[Stephen Hawking]] could be speaking to Karl and all that would come out of Karl was "gobbledygook".

* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: In the animated adaptation, as shown in the photo on this page.

* [[Insane Troll Logic]]: Karl is this Trope incarnate. For example, he's willing to donate all of his organs except his eyes. He doesn't want to donate his eyes because [[Our Ghosts Are Different|he's afraid of becoming a blind ghost.]] Even though he is convinced that blind people will get eyes in the afterlife.

** Karl thought the dodo went extinct because it tasted terrible and no-one wanted to eat it.

* [[Insistent Terminology]]: Ricky '''hates''' when Karl calls his ''Rock Busters'' clues "cryptic."

* [[Jury Duty]]: A question about Karl's hair (or lack thereof) leads to an anecdote of Karl performing jury duty. [[Hilarity Ensues|Cue maniacal laughter by Ricky]].

* [[Kiss of Life]]: Steve told a story about how a kid he knew thought he could resurrect a bird that had been hit by a car just by kissing it.

** For example, he saw a blurb in the paper about [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0328_060328_fly_glasses.html a fly with glasses]. He assumed that the fly was near-sighted and they were correcting his vision. This prompted a tirade from him about why humans are [[The Social Darwinist|"saving everything"]]. After laughing, Ricky has to explain to him that it's an art piece to show how [[Frickin' Laser Beams|awesome lasers are]] and that they didn't prescribe corrective lenses for a fly. They try to ask him how they would even test for near-sightedness in a fly and Karl replies, "Well, he'd be bumping into stuff". Cue maniacal laughter.

* [[Lack of Empathy]]: Karl seems to have a mild version of this; he's certainly not sociopathic by any means (he can be fairly sympathetic to others, including bugs drowning in his pool and worms), but he seems completely unable to put himself in the shoes of the person (or animal, as the case may be) that he's discussing, to the inevitable end that he's completely unable to understand why they just don't do what he'd do in that situation (such as why people in famine and poverty-stricken nations don't just move somewhere else). This tends to lead to some of his failures of logic.

** In Karl's world, seals are "between dogs and fish".

* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: Ricky is a master of this trope when it comes to Karl's insane ramblings. This becomes particularly prominent over time during Karl's Monkey News -- Ricky frequently foresees the incoming twist -- granted, something which is not exactly hard given that it nearly always involves something previously suspected to be a human turning out to be a monkey -- and repeatedly points out how ridiculous certain events would have to be to reach that conclusion in the hopes of making him see how absolutely unbelievable his stories are. Karl always ignores him, of course.

'''Ricky''': Yeah! There's '''never''' a problem getting jockeys. (Turns back to Karl) [[Jade Coloured Glasses|Go on.]] }}

* [[Life of the Party]]: Repeat contributor Paul "[[Insistent Terminology|The Party Animal]]" Parker. Stephen and Ricky are convinced that it's an [[Informed Ability]].

* [[Literal Change of Heart]]: Played with when Karl mistakenly thinks it's possible to replace a heart with a pacemaker.

* [[Ludd Was Right]]: Karl's stance on most new technology: for example, dismissing travelers who use sat-navs <ref>Referred to a GPS across the pond</ref> as "lazy." This does not go unchallenged by Steve and Ricky who imagine Karl giving a hard time to Columbus for using a compass or -- a ''boat.''

* [[Malaproper]]: Karl does these frequently. For example, he once said he did not want to be ''bungled'' with anyone else instead of ''bundled''.

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Season 3 opens with arguably the best episode the show's ever done, but shortly after the episode aired, Karl passed a kidney stone. The second episode is significantly more somber, but it does get better as they go on.

** Karl's hilarious stories involving his brother tend to end with him mentioning him being in prison or not having seen him in years. As Ricky put it:

* [[Mood Swinger]]: Steve and Ricky especially can wildly veer between helpless laughter and frothing rage as a result of Karl's anecdotes and personality.

* [[Moon Logic Puzzle]]: "Rockbusters" in Season 2 was an attempt to puzzle through Karl's unique logic to identify musicians by initials. Examples:

** '''B.''': "I don't want to live far from the water, I want to be right on top of it." {{spoiler|1=Be On Sea = Beyonce}}

** '''C. D.''': "If there was a Jamaican on the Titanic, he would have said this." {{spoiler|1="Christ, Da Burgh!" = [[Chris De Burgh]]}}

* [[My Girl Is a Slut]]: Karl and some friends were camping on the beach when another couple started camping nearby. When the husband offered Karl and his friends some sausages, they interpreted this as swinger's code and left.

* [[My New Gift Is Lame]]: Karl explains how he gave Suzanne a Christmas gift of an industrial-size box of condoms. Upon being pressed, Karl admits that this was a "good year" for her.

* [[Near-Death Experience]]: In the third season of podcasts, Karl tends to act as if the surgery to remove his kidney stones was one of these. Ricky tends to disagree and be less-than-impressed with his complaining on the subject as a result.

** They once dedicated an entire segment of the radio show to Karl's stories about his "near-death experiences" as a kid. The first involved choking on a Mr. Freeze pop (which he credits with giving him a sense of a new lease on life, as a result of which he went to school for three whole days in a row); the second was a snowy day when his mother didn't think it was safe to go out, so he had to sneak out to do his paper route in time to get back and watch ''[[The Pink Panther]]'', and he got caught in an upstairs window and almost fell; and the third was during the martial-arts craze in the eighties when he tried to "kick his height," but froze at the apex of the kick to try to get his father's attention, lost his balance and hit his head on the ground. There was also the story about the time he ate too many cream cakes and had a bad stomachache. His mother called the doctor, who sarcastically said he didn't have long to live, which his mother believed until Karl's dad came home and phoned the doctor to check. Ricky tactfully suggests that in another family, they might have realized the doctor was joking.

* [[One-Hour Work Week]] / [[The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything|The Producer Who Doesn't Do Anything]]: To hear Ricky and Steve tell it, Karl has a large amount of holidays and free time and does only the bare minimum required for his job. And he does ''that'' very reluctantly.

** In episode four of the third season of podcasts, Ricky and Steve essentially spend several minutes at the beginning chewing Karl out for how lazy he is, [[No Sympathy|particularly after recovering from the removal of his kidney stones]]. Karl tries to defend himself that he needs to have free time to have things to put in the diary that Ricky and Steve make him do, only for Steve to point out that the podcast is [[One-Hour Work Week|literally the only thing Karl has to do at that point]], and that by going from his diary all he seems to do is have breakfast in a cafe and play with insects anyway.

* [[Rage Breaking Point]]: Happened a few times, but the most notable is when Karl is talking about two monkeys who got 'married' during one of the Monkey News segments. Ricky's reaction when Karl finishes the story is mental.

* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: Many people accuse Karl of being 'a character, since no one can possibly be that weird in real life.' Ricky and Stephen have constantly denied this, stating that not only is Karl for real, but Ricky and Stephen ''hopelessly wished'' they could write something half as funny as what Karl says in all seriousness. And Stephen has said that if Karl ''was'' a character, Ricky and Stephen certainly wouldn't have wasted him on a podcast.

* [[Recycled in Space]]: At one point, the trio discusses remaking movies in the style of [[The Muppet Show]] (Including, of all things, ''[[Schindler's List]]''). This leads to Stephen yelling, "Schindler's List '''IN SPAAAAAACE!'''"

* [[Retraux]]: The [[Animated Adaptation]], which uses a very [[Hanna-Barbera]]-esque style. Ricky supposedly emphasized that his animated self should look like Fred Flintstone.

* [[Self-Deprecation]]: Steve finds his Rio adventure every bit as funny as the audience does. Ricky acknowledges his own weight gain and [[Big Eater]] tendencies.

** Steve is also usually the first to make fun of his poor track record with women, as in an example where they discuss a newspaper article reporting that Steve was apparently a hit with the ladies in a nightclub until he started dancing:

'''Steve:''' Rick, if I ''had'' been, [[Stop The Presses|I would have phoned the [''Daily Mail'' newspaper] ''myself'']]. Point A. I seem to distinctly remember talking to one of my mates the whole night and we were discussing the fact that we were too shy to talk to girls. So ''wrong there''. }}

* [[Sidetracked by the Analogy]]: Karl; for instance, he doesn't understand the "thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters" probability theorem, because he imagines it's about monkeys ''trying'' to reproduce the works of Shakespeare and is convinced they would make mistakes.

* [[The Social Darwinist]]: Karl seems to have this sort of mindset, such as when he describes his Auntie Nora as "a weak person" who's been "allowed" to live longer than she should have.

* [[Spell My Name with an "S"]]: The now-infamous ''"Mr K. Dilkington"'' letter received by Karl and explained in one of his diary segments. Made particularly annoying for him that they suggest he's one of their most valued customers, and later crosspollenates with [[My Nayme Is]] when someone sends an e-mail addressing Karl as such.

* [[The Stoic]]: Karl. The most he changes facial expression is raised eyebrows. He practically always has the same pouty facial expression.

* [[Stupid Crooks]]: Ricky is scammed out of a quarter-million pounds by a fraudulent bank transfer for purchasing gold. The crooks (needing to impersonate him) show up with a fake passport using a cutout of [[The Office|David Brent]] as the picture.

* [[Stupid Statement Dance Mix]]: "I could eat a knob at night."

* [[Take Our Word for It]]: Karl's descriptions of Suzanne is the prime example, especially as she is [[The Unseen]] to everybody (she wishes for her face not to be in the public domain and the fansites are respecting that wish).

* [[Technology Marches On]]: One original 1998 series episode had Ricky and Steve run a three-in-a-row track set primarily for listeners to record onto a compilation cassette. Needless to say that the on-set Youtube and digital media devices now make this really funny to listen to.

* [[Troperiffic]]: Seriously, notice how many of these tropes are about Karl.

* [[Twin Threesome Fantasy]]: Karl doesn't understand it. Why would you want two of the same woman?

* [[Unintentional Period Piece]]: To the point that it provides quite a lot of unintentional comedy, with frequent mentions of popular in the day bands such as The Darkness, mobile phones being new-fangled, cassetee and VHS tapes as prizes, the choice of music played on the show itself and frequent mentions of the Internet being new and complicated being the prime examples.

* [[Unlucky Everydude]]: Steve.

** Karl once unwittingly touched a nerve with Steve regarding this. Steve was asking how Karl had met Suzanne as a friendly gesture. Somehow, Karl got offended and poked fun at Steve's status as a single guy. This prompted Steve to make a sarcastic remark on how he didn't want to be reminded of his loneliness on a comedy radio show. It's one of the few times that Steve is genuinely upset by what Karl said.

*** Actually, if it's that particular XFM episode being referenced above (10th Nov 2001), Steve is actually first lamenting how even a homeless person can maintain a relationship with another homeless person living in a different city entirely - And whilst Ricky and Steve do ask Karl how he met Suzanne, it is not without the usual mockery, which includes suggesting that Suzanne was the sort to go through bins for food. With that in mind, it's perhaps right that Karl, for once, gets quite aggravated.

* [[Unusual Chapter Numbers]]: The "fourth" season was a series of holiday specials called the Podfather. When they returned to the traditional schedule, they just jumped to the fifth series.

* [[Unusual Euphemism]]: Karl once starts off a story by referring to the "bad wind" that hit America. It takes Ricky and Steve a few beats to puzzle out that he's talking about ''Hurricane Katrina.''

* [[Wangst]]: [[Invoked]] In-universe -- Ricky and Steve frequently accuse Karl of over-exaggerating both the effects of his kidney stones in the third season, and often generally call him out on being an all-round moaner and misery-guts. On one occasion, when a discussion about toenails leads to Karl moaning about having to carry things in general, such as bags:

* [[We All Live in America]]: Mocked during the holiday podcasts, when the trio do a Thanksgiving podcast. Thanksgiving, of course, being an American holiday founded by British expatriates giving thanks that they didn't have to live in Britain any more.

* [[What Could Have Been]]: If Karl had got any of the previous jobs he applied for (like for Granada), then the world would never have heard his musings and Ricky and Steve's careers would be rather different.

[[Category:Radio]]

[[Category:Western Animation]]