I used to be quite up to date with trends as far as comedy was concerned, aside from music I would say that comedy is my biggest obsession/love. These days I tend to miss the shows that everyone is talking about, only to catch up on DVD box sets at a later time. That wasn't always the case, as I once took great pleasure in telling people about new shows and comedians. One such comedian was Ricky Gervais, who first came to my attention on The Eleven O'Clock Show in 1999 and subsequently in Meet Ricky Gervais. Neither of these shows made a household name of Gervais, which worked to his advantage when it came to the airing of the first series of The Office. Released at the time of such fly-on-the-wall 'docusoaps' making stars of attention seeking oxygen thieves like Jane McDonald (The Cruise), Jeremy Spake (Airport) and Maureen, who tried and failed to learn to drive, The Office was the perfectly timed satire on the culture of wannabe celebrity. It wasn't the first sitcom to do away with canned laughter (The Royale Family), and it wasn't the first sitcom to make you squirm with embarrassment on the behalf of the lead character (Alan Partridge), but they took these elements and helped to reinvent the genre. The biggest mistake that Gervais made with The Office, and it's the same mistake that all of the spoof documentaries made at the time, is selling it as a comedy. When the first episode of Knowing Me Knowing You...With Alan Partridge aired in 1994, I put it on but didn't let on to my housemates that it was a spoof until it had finished. Spoof fly on the wall documentaries should never give the game away, because the public (the majority of the public that is) are easily fooled by that sort of thing, especially back then in that climate of a different fly on the wall doc every week. The same thing applied to That Peter Kay Thing, (back when Peter Kay was capable of an original thought), and I would have held back on telling the viewer that Mrs Merton was a comedy creation, just to see how many people fell for it. Alan Partridge might have seemed far-fetched, but was he as far-fetched as the similar character Richard Madley?

The Office was a sleeper hit for BBC2, and eventually grew into the sort of show that warranted a Christmas special. I can't imagine anyone watched the final episode of The Office without tears as Dawn and Tim finally got together, and David Brent summed up the dignity to tell his so-called friend Chris Finch to fuck off. The Christmas episodes stand shoulder to shoulder with It's A Wonderful Life as a heartwarming Christmas story.

The next two fictional shows from the combined writing brains of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, were Extras and Life's Too Short, which both dealt with the fickle nature of fame. Even if you're not in the business you can enjoy Andy Millman's struggle to choose between fame and fortune and credibility.

The real star of the show though, and I know I can't be the only one who believes it, has become Karl Pilkington. He was employed by the radio station XFM as a producer, and soon became a member of a three man team. It's hard to believe that Ricky Gervais was once tucked away in the ghost town of Saturday afternoon local radio, but listening to these ("right fucking illegal") recordings ten years later, reveal a wonderfully well kept secret. By the middle of the second run, (Gervais and Merchant kept leaving to make sitcoms), Karl Pilkington was the star of the show, introducing features such as 'Rockbusters' and the legendary 'Monkey News'. It wasn't really until An Idiot Abroad that we were introduced to Pilkington's full comic potential. The really unsettling thing about his opinions and observations is of course the fact that he is so frequently right. Pilkington has really proved himself, despite not being a 'real' actor, in the new series Derek.

The pilot episode of Derek unfortunately came around the same time as Ricky Gervais was in the middle of the controversy surrounding his use of the word 'mong' on Twitter. While he maintained that he wasn't using the word to make fun of people with disabilities, campaigners jumped on him about mocking people with Downs Syndrome. It blew over when he apologised for the misunderstanding and said he wouldn't use the word again. Before they had even seen it, the media were quick to denounce Derek as a cruel caricature of a mentally disabled man. It wasn't until we the public saw the pilot, that we realised that Ricky Gervais was really on to something.

With the exception of a handful of films, (mainly done as favours to friends), Ricky Gervais has written and directed every show he has been involved in. This has enabled him to maintain artistic integrity and present to the public a piece of work that he is 100% happy with. You can put his CV in front of you and read it from top to bottom, and see that he has never put a foot wrong creatively. On record, Gervais has said that he doesn't know if Derek is his best work, but it is his favourite work. We are now two episodes in to the series, and I have shed tears at both. When Dawn kissed Tim at the office Christmas party and replied to Gareth's warning about her fiance with "not now she hasn't", and when Andy Millman made an impassioned speech from the Celebrity Big Brother house, Ricky Gervais flexed his writing muscles and made us laugh and cry in equal measure. Combining comedy with pathos isn't an easy task, and when it is done well, it is a work of art.

Derek isn't a mentally handicapped man, he is merely an innocent person in a cynical world. Derek is simply the best work that Gervais has done because it isn't trying to be a sitcom, neither is it trying to be a sentimental drama, it is whatever you want it to be. Try watching Karl Pilkinton as Dougie in the first episode, having a go at the man from the council about funding, without bursting into applause when the residents do.

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