Did anyone else catch this new HBO series? It was painfully funny. The scene with the priest had me on the floor.
Well, I saw “Extras” (without the apostrophe) 
I’m a fan of Ricky Gervais and was looking forward to this for weeks. I was not disappointed. It seems like the character is not as big a putz as David Brent, but the scene with the priest was like something out of the office.
Kate Winslet was brilliant. I hope it comes on On Demand so I can watch those scenes again and get it all. “Purple-headed womb ferret.” I wonder if Ricky wrote that or she just went with it?
Very funny. Also nice to have an atheist character on the telly. I can understand his white lie, though. If a nice girl with cerebral palsy told me that her faith in God and Heaven kept her going, and then asked me what I believed, I’d be strongly tempted to give her some comforting bullshit.
“Father Michael O’Flatley”; that made me laugh out loud. I loved how he insisted on getting the name right – the fake name he had made up a minute before, and which he was having to admit was a lie.
I had never heard of this show before I was flipping channels and rested on HBO last night. Holy crap! My girlfriend and I were rolling the whole time! Halfway through the show it went into my DVR queue.
Kate Winslet as Kate Winslet the ass was so funny:
“Do you know how many pictures there are about the Holocaust? We get it. It was grim. Move on.”
Plus anytime I get to see Kate Winslet pretend to suck on her own tit is a good time to me.
Kate Winslet stole the show, but the cast and setup was very funny. The priest scene was a riot: “Condoms! Who needs 'em, right?”
I watched most of them when the BBC showed them a while ago. They are all very good IMO.
It will be interesting to see how it works when it deals with UK TV stars like Les Dennis* who you Americans have never heard of.
*The strongest and funniest episode AFAIC.
My fave was the episode which featured
Patrick Stewart describing the script he was writing.
thwartme
Yeah, Patrick Stewart had me gasping for breath.
Loved it! I thought Kate was hilarious. And of course, it’s nice to see an atheist explain himself matter-of-factly on TV. Though I loved the meeting at the church and the whole debacle with Father Michael O’Flatley as well. What was it, “Let the seed of love spill forth?”
My only complaint is that I need to do what I did with The Office - use the closed captioning to figure out what they’re saying about 10% of the time. But it’s well worth it.
Moderator commenteth: Title fixed at request of OP. Unfortunately, that makes cricetus’s comment seem unanchored (as it were.)
Even if I didn’t like Ricky Gervaise, it would have been worth it to see Kate Winslet in a nun’s habit saying “You’d better get round here right away, because I’m fudding myself stupid and I’m bloody loving it!”
I thought that the best of them was episode 4 (well, it was episode 4 when the BBC showed it over here) featuring a bloke called Les Dennis.
I wonder whether they’ll bother showing it in America at all because nobody will have the slightest clue who Les Dennis is or why they storyline is so painfully accurate. (Then again, we get plenty of American shows over here where many of the references zoom straight over our heads …)
By the way, the bird who plays Maggie, Ashley Jensen, is flipping gorgeous.
If you can’t wait, the DVD of the series comes out in the UK on the 31st of October, for £12.99 (+ p&p) on amazon.co.uk.
Finally caught it. Totally funny.
I loved it at the end when the boyfriend says, “and rummaging around in your basement means. . .”
Winslet: my fanny.
Ricky: “you ought to see me in a white sheet.”
I really didn’t like “The Office”. It was incredibly predictable. So I watched the debut with some concern.
Much of it was very “Office”-like and not funny. But Kate Winslet (who I never really liked) was absolutely astoundingly hilarious!
In short: several minutes of tedium, then a gut-buster, lather, rinse, repeat.
That tracking shot in the prayer meeting, landing on RG wearing the Travolta outfit was hilarious.
And of course, the newest band name: Purple-headed Womb Ferret
A shame it’s the only episode I’ll see, since I happened to be in a hotel that weekend (the only reason I had access to HBO).
That had me rolling! Just saw it on On Demand. The priest scene was definetly hilarious, especially the kissing the priest on the hand and then having to explain that his priest didn’t make him kiss ‘that way’.
The ‘agent’ and the catch up meeting had me rolling as well!