Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, and acted in the British television sitcoms The Office (2001–2003), Extras (2005–2007), An Idiot Abroad (2010–2012), and Life's Too Short (2011–2013). He also created, wrote and starred in Derek (2012–2014) and After Life (2019–2022). He has won seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the Rose d'Or twice. The Observer named Gervais one of the 50 funniest performers in British comedy in 2003. In 2007, he was placed at No. 11 on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups, and at No. 3 in their 2010 list. In 2010, he was included in the Time 100 list of World's Most Influential People.
Kelly Macdonald is a Scottish actress. Known for her performances on film and television, she has received various accolades including a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Stephen James Merchant is an English comedian, actor, director, and writer. Alongside Ricky Gervais, Merchant was the co-writer and co-director of the British TV comedy series The Office (2001–2003), and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of both Extras (2005–2007) and Life's Too Short (2011–2013). With Gervais and Karl Pilkington, he hosted The Ricky Gervais Show in its radio, podcast, audiobook, and television formats; the radio version won a bronze Sony Award. He also provided the voice of the robotic "Intelligence Dampening Sphere" Wheatley in the 2011 video game Portal 2. Merchant co-developed the Sky One travel documentary series An Idiot Abroad (2010–2012) and co-created Lip Sync Battle (2015–present).
Karl Pilkington is an English presenter, comedian, actor, voice-artist, producer and author.
Radio X is a British national commercial radio station focused on alternative music, primarily indie rock, and owned by Global. The station launched in 1989 as a pirate radio station named Q102, before being renamed Xfm in 1992. The station became a legally licensed London-wide station in 1997, and in 2015 began national broadcasting under the name Radio X.
Extras is a British sitcom about extras working in television, film, and theatre. The series was co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and was written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, both of whom starred in it. Extras follows the lives of Andy Millman (Gervais), his friend Maggie Jacobs and Andy's substandard agent and part-time retail employee Darren Lamb (Merchant) as Millman muddles through life as an anonymous "background performer" who eventually finds success as a B-list sitcom star.
Robin Ince is an English comedian, actor and writer, known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox, creating Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, co-creating The Cosmic Shambles Network, and his stand-up comedy career.
The Office is the original British mockumentary television sitcom first broadcast in the UK on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme follows the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough branch of the fictional Wernham Hogg paper company. Gervais also starred in the series, playing the central character David Brent.
The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy radio show in the UK starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, later adapted into a podcast and a television series. Although named after Gervais, it mostly revolves around the life and ideas of Karl Pilkington. The show started in August 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004 and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered the show as a podcast series of 12 shows. According to the BBC, by September 2006, the podcasts of the series had been downloaded nearly 18 million times. As of March 2011, the podcast has been downloaded over 300 million times.
Podcasts, previously known as "audioblogs", have roots dating back to the 1980s. With the advent of broadband Internet access and portable digital audio playback devices such as the iPod, podcasting began to catch hold in late 2004. Today there are more than 115,000 English-language podcasts available on the Internet, and dozens of websites available for distribution at little or no cost to the producer or listener.
The World of Karl Pilkington is the first book written and illustrated by Karl Pilkington, and contains transcripts from The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts and excerpts from his own diary, as well as drawings and some original material illustrated by Pilkington himself. It was published and released in 2006. As stated on The Ricky Gervais Show, Karl put a lot of work into the book and had been illustrating the drawings featured in the book for a considerable amount of time. Karl had stated briefly whilst producing The Ricky Gervais Show that he had had an ambition to write a book.
Bears3 are a series of short animated films created by Matt Everitt and Matt Clark. The films feature 3 teddy bears animated to dialogue taken from The Ricky Gervais Show an Xfm radio show featuring Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington. Additional original dialogue was recorded by the trio for the episode Y-Fronts and the films went on to feature on both Ricky's and Xfm's website.
Life's Too Short is a British mockumentary sitcom, created and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Warwick Davis, about "the life of a showbiz dwarf." Davis plays a fictionalised version of himself, and both Gervais and Merchant appear in supporting roles as themselves. The show began airing on BBC Two on 10 November 2011. Premium cable channel HBO, which co-produced the series with the BBC, has the US rights and aired the series from 19 February 2012.
Dan Fraga is a comic book artist, storyboard artist, concept artist, and animation and film director originally from Martinez, California. He also hosts a Youtube show called, "Couchdoodles Show". Immediately after high school, he was hired to work as an illustrator for Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios; one of the founding partner studios that made up Image Comics. Dan was one of the youngest creators to be a part of the beginnings of Image Comics. He worked in the comic book industry for many years and worked on titles such as Spider-Man, Bloodstrike, Black Flag, Kid Supreme, Superman, Black Panther, Witchblade, and Wolverine.
An Idiot Abroad is a British travel documentary comedy television series broadcast on Sky One, as well as a series of companion books published by Canongate Books, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington. The ongoing theme of both the television series and the books is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel, so Merchant and Gervais make him travel while they stay in the United Kingdom and monitor his progress.
The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy animated series produced for and broadcast by HBO and Channel 4. The series is an animated version of the popular British audio podcasts and audiobooks of the same name, which feature Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant along with colleague and friend Karl Pilkington, talking about various subjects behind the microphone. The TV series consists of past audio recordings of these unscripted "pointless conversations," with animation drawn in a style similar to classic era Hanna-Barbera cartoons, presenting jokes and situations in a literal context.
Derek is a British comedy-drama television series starring, written by and directed by Ricky Gervais. The pilot was produced by Derek Productions Ltd. for Channel 4 and aired on 12 April 2012. Channel 4 describes the show as "A bittersweet comedy drama about a group of outsiders living on society's margins".
Vik Sharma is an English film and television composer best known for his soundtracks to the TV series An Idiot Abroad, The Moaning of Life, and Hello Ladies. He composed the original score for the film Fighting with My Family, written and directed by Stephen Merchant. Sharma worked with Blur's guitarist and founder member Graham Coxon along with Jason Cooper of The Cure to create a 'quintessentially British' soundtrack for the film. In July 2021 he released Listen Without Listening, a binaural ambient album, incorporating sounds of nature.
