Talking Telly: A first-hand look at Ricky Gervais’ Out Of England 2 special

Courtesy: HBO

It’s a little bit special to get the chance to review a British comedian’s TV special before it airs anywhere, much less in America. It’s even more special when you aren’t even previewing an advance copy of the special on DVD. But I was lucky enough to attend the main taping of “Ricky Gervais: Out Of England 2″ in Chicago in October, and the HBO special is set to air this Saturday night at 10 p.m. EST.

I had meant to review Gervais’ show immediately after seeing it in October, but frankly I needed a little time to digest it. One thing that was amazing was how an usher told a few of us beforehand how shocking the previous audiences (he did a total of three shows in Chicago) found his set. Apparently a fair number of people thought, “Oh, that’s the guy who invented The Office, right?” and bought tickets just in time to sit there and get offended. And the first thing to know about Gervais is that if you get offended by just about anything, his standup act is not for you.

And that’s where I, who really don’t get offended by too much, got a bit stuck on a subject that probablymost of the audience wouldn’t care about – fat people. According to interviews after the fact, Gervais realized that since he’s now lost about 25 pounds or so, he should probably retire his fat joke repertoire. So he finished them out in style, spending a lot of the beginning of the set talking an awful lot about fat women. That’s probably my sore spot because I’ll be the first to admit that my body type is much like Miranda Hart’s. So I needed a bit of time to get over myself and judge the rest of the act in itself.

There was a lot of great stuff that the Gervais fans are almost guaranteed to love. The best of the act was something I touched on in my previous post about Karl Pilkington – Gervais did a retelling with commentary of a children’s picture book about Noah’s Ark that he was given in Sunday School as a kid. Once again, his material would be easy to be sensitive about if you get touchy about Christian beliefs being the subject of secular comedy, but in truth it was hilarious.

And don’t let it be said that Gervais can’t make fun of himself, especially the fact that he’s now self-described as incredibly posh and spoiled.

Another highlight that’s going to be in the special (because I’ve seen the synopsis) is another commentary done to illustrations in a book about homosexuality amongst animals. I promise that you will never see dolphins in the same way. He also talks about the Icelandic volcanic brouhaha and about the question of travel disruptions being classified as “acts of God”, and what he sees as being the “problem with heroin.”

In all, I’ve had time to get the ability back to see the humor in things that I could take personally, although I still hope that Gervais is really not right in saying that fat women might as well keep eating because we’d still be ugly if we were thin. But even when he’s pissing me off, he’s still one of the funniest guys out there, and the rare British funny guy to be found onstage in the Midwest.