E-Mail This Article to a Friend Over acting Ricky Gervais's Extras is only okay BY RYAN STEWART

It is inappropriate, unfair, and lazy for me to compare Ricky Gervais's new show, Extras to his previous one, BBC's The Office. But such is the burden one has to bear after co-creating this decade's inarguable best comedy, which features a character (the overbearing David Brent, an aspiring comedian trapped in a white-collar middle-management body) that would have to be near the top of any short list of the funniest of all time. Nothing Gervais and co-creator Stephen Merchant could have possibly done would have stacked up favorably to The Office, and, as such, the new show falls predictably short.

So with all that out of the way, we should all try to judge Extras based solely on its own merits, and not because it doesn't match the all-time great that came before it. With that in mind, the feeling here is that even in a world in which The Office never existed, Extras would be an okay show that has its moments, but doesn’t do much else.

Brent plays Andy Millman, an aspiring actor and writer who, despite the fact that he's 43 and a little overweight, still feels he's just one lucky break away from superstardom. The only "acting" work he can get is as an extra in various film productions, but he tries to make the most of it by accosting the stars on set (who, in the first season, include Kate Winslet, Ben Stiller, and Patrick Stewart) to see if they can finagle a speaking part for him. Sometimes they do, but every time, he wrecks the opportunity by saying the wrong thing: he gets kicked off Ben Stiller's set for making fun of Starsky and Hutch and he muffs an opportunity to act with Samuel L. Jackson by overcompensating for the fact that he isn't racist by saying things that could be construed as the opposite ("she doesn't think you all look alike, if that's what you're thinking").

An opportunistic performer who's prone to putting his foot in his mouth. Those who've seen The Office may find that it sounds a little familiar. But the key difference between Andy and David Brent is that Andy is a well-intentioned nice guy with friends, while Brent was just a pathetic loser with an over-inflated ego. And while Andy's visions of acting glory are no more realistic than David's dreams of taking his comedy act big time, his goals seem born out of naivete, not vanity.

The experience of watching Gervais play a likeable guy will be a little jarring for Office fans, but it's somewhat softened by the fact that he is still the show's most interesting character. Andy has an Elaine Benes-style platonic best friend, Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen) who has a weak dating subplot in each episode – one potential suitor has a large show to compensate for the discrepancy in the length of his legs, another one enjoys telephone dirty-talk.

Andy's incompetent agent, played by Merchant, is a good source of easy laughs for his inabilities to run a business (his phone was off the hook for two days and he didn't notice) and his lack of faith in Andy's talents ("I'm not sure there's a demand for, you know, 45-year-old blokes.") The guest stars are good sports, too, especially Stiller and Stewart. Stiller portrays himself as a control freak with all of his films' box office stats committed to memory. Stewart makes Star Trek references with no prompting, only to learn that Andy has never seen the show. Less entertaining is former East Enders star Ross Kemp, who makes cryptic references to his military training and the idea that he could kill a man with his bear hands, and Les Dennis, who comes off as nothing more than the washed-up comic he apparently is. Maybe these two would be funnier to an English audience, but since I've never seen East Enders or the British version of Family Feud, I was left simply scratching my head. Perhaps that one's my problem, though.

One of the things that made The Office so wonderful was its mockumentary format, something that's not present in Extras, which means each episode needs actual storylines, and unfortunately, the ones they came up with are weak. Having a different guest star on each episode is an intriguing gimmick, but frankly, there are only so many different ways Andy can talk himself into trouble before the whole "extra trying to make it big" premise starts to wear thin. Apparently, Gervais and Merchant felt that way too, for they abandon the formula by episode five and simply have Andy land a part as a genie in a theatrical production of Aladdin. Then in episode six (the first season finale), they go meta-, a la Seinfeld's fourth season (you know, George and Jerry write a pilot…) It's an interesting enough idea, but it's surprising they pulled it out so soon in the show's run.

All that said, it's a testament to the talents of Gervais and Merchant that the show still provides some memorable moments. When Andy lies about his Catholicism in the show's pilot to get a date with a devout actress, he finds himself trying to sustain the lie in front of a priest with embarrassing results. He tries something similar when ducking into the cemetery to see his "mother's grave" (they stop in front of a grave of a 100-year-old Jewish woman.) just to avoid a guy who wants to be his friend. The show doesn't get all of its humor from people stammering through awkward moments: the characters create their own, too, like when Maggie asks about what an attractive man is eating and learns he's on a high-fiber diet, to which she responds "no bowel cancer for you."

The show is certainly watchable, and the final episode hints at some real potential for the second season. It makes for a serviceable "cool down" after Curb Your Enthusiasm, its Sunday night lead-in. But then again, it's also appropriate that Curb is the lead-in, as that's one of very few shows that has approximated the greatness of its pantheon-level predecessor, in this case Seinfeld. Maybe The Office was the worst thing that could have happened to Gervais. Maybe we're expecting too much out of him. But at this point in its evolution, it's hard to picture Extras being anything more than a footnote.