On Gear Live: Samsung S95C: The OLED TV You Can’t Afford (to Ignore!)

Latest Gear Live Videos

Extras—Season Two Ends the Series

Posted by Wendy Michaels Categories: Comedy, Prime Time, BBC, Cable, HBO, Extras,

Ricky Gervais It’s become the Ricky Gervais Syndrome. Following in the footsteps of his original series, The Office, which ended after two seasons, so too shall Extras suffer the same fate. Gervais’ excellent series Extras is now running the second season on British TV and is expected to air on HBO in 2007. According to Gervais, “At the moment, I don’t think there will be another one. [Co-creator Stephen Merchant] and I have always had this thing where we only like to do two series. It’s like The Office—people are always asking why we didn’t do any more, but we just wanted to leave people wanting more.” Huh, must be a British thing. Here in the states, we run TV series until people just can’t take any more.

So, enjoy it while you can. The great thing about Extras are the cameos, with season two featuring appearances by Orlando Bloom, David Bowie and Daniel Radcliffe. At the end of the first season, Gervais’ character, Andy Millman, was selling a sitcom to the BBC; season two picks up with Andy losing control over the show. Let the laughs begin.

Read More | Zap2it

Advertisement

NBC Plans to Stream New Fall Shows, Offer Blogs

Posted by Wendy Michaels Categories: Comedy, Drama, Prime Time, Reality, NBC, ER, My Name Is Earl, Internet, Video,

NBC logo In a press release from NBC today, they announced that NBC.com will stream episodes of their new fall shows for free—Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Kidnapped, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights and Heroes—following the original airing of the episodes. NBC.com is also going to offer blogs written by a variety of shows’ creators, producers or cast members. The blogs will be online for every show on the air, with an additional live blog immediately after the premiere episode.

Jeff Gaspin, President, NBC Universal Cable Entertainment, Digital Content and Cross-Network Strategy said of the news, “When you launch a new season, it’s important that you get the shows in front of as many eyeballs as possible. We’ve created a variety of new, engaging digital offerings to generate excitement and drive viewership to the network.”

Upcoming premiere blogs include:

  • Deal or No Deal (9/18), The Banker’s Blog
  • Studio 60 (9/18), Aaron Sorkin, Creator and Executive Producer and Thomas Schlamme, Executive Producer and Director
  • Kidnapped (9/20), Jason Smilovic, Creator and Executive Producer
  • My Name Is Earl (9/21), Greg Garcia, Creator and Executive Producer
  • The Office (9/21), Greg Daniels, Executive Producer
  • 30 Rock (11/11), Tina Fey, Creator and Executive Producer

A number of other blogs will accompany the shows’ premieres, including Law & Order, ER, Heroes, Friday Night Lights and Twenty Good Years, among others.

Read More | Lost Remote

Unauthorized Microsoft Training Videos Feature Brit “Office”

Posted by Wendy Michaels Categories: Comedy, BBC, The Office, Internet,

Ricky GervaisAs many videos that are never meant for public consumption find their way on the Internet, so too have a couple of Microsoft in-house training videos from The Office creator Ricky Gervais leaked online. Both Google Video and YouTube included the videos in their lineup, but the films were meant only for Microsoft employee’s eyes. Microsoft commissioned the videos in 2004, to provide “a light-hearted way of getting our staff to think about the values they attach to working at Microsoft,” according to a company spokeswoman. Both videos run about 20 minutes and feature Gervais and co-writer Stephen Merchant, with Gervais playing his annoying Office character David Brent and Merchant acting as a Microsoft employee.

YouTube has since pulled the videos, however Google Video still has them up. I checked them out and they are really great—especially if you miss the original Office humor and the way Gervais plays his character to the most annoying level, with gobs of arrogance and self-confidence. I’ve always found his character to be almost painful to watch because of the level of embarrassment you feel for him—all the while he’s clueless that he’s being inappropriate. It’s complete genius.

According to the company’s spokeswoman, “These videos were produced for internal use and were never intended to be viewed by the public. We are actively working to investigate how and why they have appeared now.”

If you don’t have time to watch the full videos, just check out the last few minutes of each. Following the end credits, some of the outtakes have been included—there is nothing more infectious than Ricky Gervais laughing. Enjoy.

Read More | Yahoo! News

Advertisement