The Ricky Gervais Show

Using the audio from the radio episodes and then supplying a sort of 1960s-style Hanna-Barbera wash of cheap animation to more fully illustrate the inanity of their conversations, Gervais has landed on something quite special that can be scorchingly funny.

This '60s-style animated edition of their record-breaking podcast, featuring cartoon versions of the duo and idiot savant sidekick Karl Pilkington, magnifies everything venal and childish about the original (jokes about dildos on sticks and monkeys on benders) while masking its incredible wit.

Not only did I enjoy the upcoming The Ricky Gervais Show, which is an insane animated version of his equally insane podcasts, but I laughed so loud that I practically had to be restrained in the office.

Media Rights Capital, an independent production company, took an offbeat idea and made it work surprisingly well.

The cartoon show is the least of his series, but it is generally amusing and pretty to watch, and I like the way it rambles.

Given that the show largely consists of the animated Gervais and Merchant sitting around a table with the notoriously round-headed Pilkington, disabusing him of one oddball notion after another, it's strange that Gervais would've chosen this show to carry his name. But true believers--or fans of "The Life & Times of Tim," whose second-season premiere follows at 9:30--may well have a yabba-dabba-do time.

Oh, you'll laugh. But you probably won't remember much of it the next day.

That a premise so slight yields as much amusement as it does is a tribute to Gervais and Merchant's quick wits and to Pilkington's blend of extreme gullibility and offbeat quirkiness....The purposely retro animation, which turns Gervais into a more cheerful Fred Flintstone, not only adds nothing to the mix--it subtracts.

The show's only visual, literally, is cartoon animation of Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington talking. That's a bold gamble because if the words aren't grabbing the viewer, there's nothing else to hold the fort until the words get good again....So as with radio, you ignore the lulls and focus on the keepers.

I'm still not sold on watching the show. I still think I might prefer to listen to the podcasts instead. The animation adds some humor but probably not enough to justify adding this series to my already overbooked TV viewing schedule.

The chats are amusing, quirky and strangely obsessed with monkeys (which, granted, is always a funny topic), but the illustrations tend to overemphasize the throwaway moments, draining them of spontaneity and often of their original humor.

Animation would seem to be an ideal vehicle for this, but there's only so much it can do--in part because there's no adhesive to the episodes. The three guys sit and bullshit for 20-some-odd minutes--at times entertainingly--until the program simply ends.

To reduce talents as large as Gervais and Merchant to caricatures seems absurd. The vitality and enthusiasm that passes between them, and the unfettered joy implicit in that, demands a human face, and without that, HBO is missing the point, creating a show that's easy to listen to, but actually hard to watch.

Pilkington's musings are sometimes amusing and always pointless, but the animation almost totally nullifies the first and intensifies the second.

Alas, HBO has come up with a dull, unimaginative interpretation of the podcast, essentially giving us animated versions of the three men sitting in a sound booth talking into microphones.