Chimpomatic

Extras

Christmas Special

Feature-length outing to finish off Ricky Gervais's second sitcom. Andy Millman's now a big enough star to be able to skip ahead of Hale & Pace at the Ivy, while Maggie's had enough of arsing about in showbiz and is working as a cleaner. Millman gets seduced by the idea of getting an agent who isn't hanging out with Barry from EastEnders all day, and then finds out fame isn't all it's cracked up to be?

In some ways, this works much better than the series, which seemed pretty myopic in its scope - effectively Gervais writing about getting The Office off the ground. Here, he steps back from the process to show that making it isn't that great either. Not really much of a revelation, perhaps, but there's just enough in the final rant against our worship of micro celebs to make it interesting. Along the way, they cram in more self-deprecating cameos from George Michael, Gordon Ramsey, Dean Gaffney, Lionel Blair, Clive Owen etc etc - which makes it feel like they hate themselves for not being able to resist getting all these people in the show.

Be interesting to see what he comes up with next, and it is admirable that he's been able to pull the plug on another pretty big show. Just hope it's not another TV show about TV; think we've had enough of those now thanks - even ITV's getting in on the mediacirclejerking next year with their sitcom (Moving Wallpaper) about the making of a soap (Echo Beach) that you then get to watch.