David Brent; life on the road.

[jonny jeez]

[QUOTE 4432620, member: 45"]He's a one and a half trick pony.

I still watch a lot of his stuff, but his range is very limited.[/QUOTE]
Fair enough.

I agree he has very limited range.

 

[Scoosh]

MOD NOTE:
A lot of posts have been Deleted. Members have made their positions clear.
Stop all circular arguments, personal attacks - keep to the subject and the thread can continue.

 

[jonny jeez]

I've met him a few times. He was a nobber.

Even Graham Norton was less up his own arse...

At last, someone who is judging a person based upon experience of the actual person.

I found Vic reeves (Jim Muir or whatever) to be the same. Every time I met him he was very odd, very removed and painfully awkward.

Bob Mortimer is, in my opinion the mouthpiece for their partnership, in the real world.

But on screen, the relationship is weighted slightly differently, with Mortimer being much more of a second fiddle.

 

[TwickenhamCyclist]

[QUOTE 4430996, member: 45"]I don't. I think he's misrepresented learning disability to put it into a box so he can make something funny. And his arrogant denial of this at interview reinforces my view.[/QUOTE]
I watched Derek and didn't take it that way at all... each to their own though. I think Gervais has done a fair bit to promote disability - from having Ash Atalla produce The Office to having people with varying disabilities act in his series... I think he can push it too far at times and sails close to the edge, but in a way good comedy should push the limits. For me, most of his stuff that 'tackles' disability isn't just a base 'lets all get a cheap laugh at the expense of the disabled person' but more to do with challenging perceptions and laughing at the way able-bodied people are around the disabled. I've spent a fair amount of time among people with varying disabilities and one of the things I see on a regular basis is a kind of very well meaning but none the less patronising 'does he take sugar' attitude, especially around humour... I think the way Gervais laughs with people who have disabilities and breaks the taboo that disability should always be seen as something serious and not fun (I appreciate you were not arguing this in the first place @MisterPaul) is quite refreshing and progressive... for example a few weeks ago I helped take a bunch of blind children for a cycle around Richmond Park and then on to do some Archery... they had no problem laughing at the potential look of fear on a sighted persons face as a blind archer turned up on a bike, bow and arrow in hand...

 

[Starchivore]

I think with the disability jokes in Gervais' programmes- extras and the office, etc., the joke is generally the idiocy of his own character (his ignorance or his doomed efforts to be PC and always putting his foot in it). It's never laughing at disability as such. But no one should be excluded from being part of jokes, that's part of being included in society. I don't think Gervais' scripts have any nastiness.