***** - In 2006, Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington began a series of comedy podcasts that have consistently been some of the funniest stuff ever recorded. This animated version of the first series of those podcasts is a must view for fans of animated television and comedy. The animation itself has a very Hanna-Barbara feel and takes many cues from shows like “The Flintstones” with the Ricky character even being almost an exact replica of Fred Flintstone. This turned me off a little bit at first, but as I saw more of the imagination of the animators shown as the series moved along it won me over. I still don’t particularly like the depictions of the three main characters, and while the weird blotchy blue background in the scenes featuring them remains pretty off-putting, I have become quite fond of the scenario dramatization scenes. The danger, of course, with something like this that I have heard countless times over headphones and have imagined pictorially in my mind is that the pictures presented on film won’t be as good as what I imagined. Luckily, the team of animators on this project are able to meet or exceed my expectations in all respects with the possible exception of the scenes of Ricky, Steve and Karl sitting in the studio. Otherwise, it’s great. The material is fantastic, and Ricky’s theory that Karl is one of the funniest people on the planet is quite clearly shown to be a fact that I am overjoyed HBO viewers have been able to discover like so many people did five years ago on the internet.
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