More Than Just DVD Extras

I've made it through the first series of Extras, well two thirds of it anyway.

I thought that the first couple of episodes which featured Ben Stiller, and Ross Kemp and Vinnie Jones respectively were rather slow, and from a personal level remind me of the long gap between finishing my HND course and waiting for the Venice visit at the end of August.

Although to be fair it was only roughly 8 weeks and I only worked two days a week on Fridays and Saturdays.

The DVD has the episodes arranged in the planned order but on the advice of Jonathan Ross, the Ben Stiller episode was the first one shown. The only real downside was that we didn't see Stephen Merchant as Darren Lamb until the Ross Kemp episode which has that brilliant joke about the phone being unplugged intentionally.

I liked how Gervais wanted the series to appear quietly like the Office by having it scheduled in the summer months on BBC 2. However it got quite a lot of viewers and hype surrounding it and it turned out pretty well from the beginning as opposed to word of mouth success.

For the benefit of the very few who have never seen the series it's based around Ricky's character Andy Millman who struggles to become more than just a "background artist" but encounters plenty of social faux pas with people of either ethnic or disadvantaged backgrounds.

His only real friend is Maggie Jacobs who doesn't mean any harm but sometimes ends up on the wrong side of a misunderstanding.

But Stephen's character overall has to be my favourite with him playing Andy's useless agent who also works part time as a salesman at the Carphone Warehouse.

It's also worth mentioning Greg, the rather smug actor who laughs at Andy's misfortunes, played by Shaun Pye who has probably made me laugh several times as he's one of the writers on Jonathan Ross's chat show and on The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year.

Onto the infamous episode dissections starting off with episode 3 with Kate Winslet as the guest.

This involves Maggie getting hints off the Titanic actress on making dirty phone calls whilst Andy meets with one of the other extras who has a sister with cerebal palsy played by Francesca Martinez.

Francesca was a familiar face as she'd appeared in Grange Hill for five years as disabled character Rachel Burns, and is now a stand up comedienne.

Andy gets to know the two women who turn out to be Catholics and Andy despite being an Atheist starts lying about himself being a Catholic which results in him being invited to what he thinks is a social get together.

It actually turns out to be a religous meeting where Andy turns up dressed like Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever.
When asked about his faith Andy starts bullshitting and making up the names of priests before revealing that he was only really interested in sleeping with one of the female extras.

There was a scene that didn't make it to the show that was on the deleted scenes which involved him being asked to give a reading or hymn of his choice and he ended up singing "Mary's Boy Child" in the style of Boney M.

If that had got into the show it would have been brilliant but it may have prolonged the actual scene in terms of him being caught out.

Episode 4 was the one I'd been looking forward to the most which starred Les Dennis.
I thought Les was a very good sport when taking part and had no problems with the original script when sent to him, showing that he was more than happy to do jokes about his relationship problems and his overall career.

I thought he got a hard time when he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in late 2002 with the press and various cynics labelling him as "Les Miserables" but I thought he came across brilliantly and had no major ego or anything which resulted in him coming second beaten only by Mark Owen.

Although Mark was a deserving winner as well and the two got on brilliantly.

I can remember Les explaining why he did it on Channel 4's documentary "Who Killed Saturday Night" in 2004, by using the old phrase "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" as he appeared on the show just months after he quit Family Fortunes when it was revealed it was to be moved to a daytime slot.

Anyway, Andy meets with Les after reluctantly agreeing to appear as the genie in a pantomime of Aladdin in Guildford. This is shown by a brilliant scene at the beginning with him and Darren where the agent explains that there's very little out there
for "a fat man with a tan".

The daughter of the pantomime's director happens to be an old friend of Maggie's and invites her to her birthday party where it turns out that the other attendees are members of her family and her Dad has bullied her into performing a dreadfully contrived dance routine consisting of "You're The One That I Want" and "Making Your Mind Up" amongst other monstrosities.

When she reveals that Maggie has encouraged her to start doing what she wants rather than being told by her father, Maggie is asked to leave.

Les on the other hand finds out that his new girlfriend has been having a fling with one of the stagehands, and ends up on a one night stand after a night in the pub with Andy.

The overall highlight was Les doing a rather forced impression of Mavis from Coronation Street which he was "famous" for in the 80s but on the subject of impressions it reminds me of another of Wossy's gags when Emma Noble guested on "It's Only TV But I Like It";

"Emma goes out with James Major, the son of ex Prime Minister John Major and they both met at a Joe Longthorne concert. She'll never forget the first words he said to her:

'Who's he doing now?'"

I used to get Joe Longthorne and Les Dennis confused with each other as Les had his own BBC 1 sketch show whilst Joe had a rather dreadful series made by Central for the ITV network in the late 80s.

Thankfully Les had Family Fortunes to fall back on whereas Joe went back to summer season.

Onto episode 5 where the guest star was Samuel L Jackson although he didn't really have a big part to play in the episode.

The main plot involved Andy reluctantly befriending what was technically a dullard who had forgone a speaking role with the Matrix actor and given it to Andy. However the man thought that Andy should repay the favour by taking him out for a meal which Andy hinted at doing but never fully agreed to.

After much stalking and embarrassing confrontations Andy agreed but then gave up as it was just making him feel depressed but not before being offered one of two tickets to see "We Will Rock You".

Maggie had grown attached to an attractive black actor who despite a few misunderstandings agreed to spend a date with her at her flat.
This would probably be a good time to mention that brilliant scene with Andy giving Maggie "The Racism Test" by offering the choice of two people with the outcome being that Maggie would always go with the white person because they weren't a criminal for example.

The scene makes a lot more sense when done on the TV series.

However the date fell apart when Maggie got concious of the fact that there was a doll of a Golly on her shelf and made things worse by trying to hide it.

As is always the case in any of Gervais's sitcoms there were some scenes I had to fast forward through due to their toe curling nature and in this case it was when she went up to her ex date and said that she hated reggae and jazz music in hope of getting past the stereotype that not all black people like those types of music.

The final episode had Patrick Stewart as the guest star and he was the only big name actor I was really excited about as not being a major film fan, I didn't really have much interest in the others who appeared, but had grown up seeing Patrick in the lead role on Star Trek The Next Generation.

There were quite a few references to the catchphrase "Make It So" which was one of the key lines from TNG although in this instance it resulted in the characters being ignorant to it overall.

The plot involves Andy giving his script to Patrick who then donates it to the BBC who call in Andy for a meeting.

It is here he meets Ian the commisioning editor and Damon a very camp staff writer who Andy is unsure about working with.

When Maggie arrives he confesses all, stating that he thinks he's "too gay" although Maggie makes the wrong step and tells Damon everything he's said.

Andy is called to a meeting where Damon storms out in response to Andy's comments although it turns out that the commisioning editor is also gay as well despite not having any of the characteristics that Andy would associate with homosexuality.

That particular scene reinforced that certain individuals could be same sex, regardless of their personality traits which was important as I was about to start University and had never been around anyone of that orientation on any of my college courses.

When I arrived though I barely noticed at all although I tended to take note of who was who but in the same way as finding out which ones were vegetarians, who supported Manchester United etc.

Anyway, as a result of Andy's comments the BBC threaten to pull the plug on Andy's pilot but he apologises to Damon and they allow planning to continue on the pilot of the sitcom which would become the focus of the second series.

I liked the idea of expanding the main plot as it would have got rather boring with Andy trying to big up his part as an extra on other film projects, but with Maggie still a background artist, it added balance and provided an even stronger series, going even more below the belt on occasions especially in episode three.

I'll go onto that tomorrow when I start having a gander at the series which I don't think I've seen since the original transmission in September 2006.

Although he may be a bit of a twat, there's no faulting that Ricky has made some of the best television series this decade. I even found his chat show funny oddly enough.