How do you follow up the funniest half-hour of television since Seinfeld—or perhaps ever? For Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the co-creators of the beloved, internationally replicated show The Office, the answer was to scale back in ambition and amp up the gags. The six episodes comprising the first season of Extras, a fitfully hilarious HBO-aired series about fringe-dwellers in the movie industry, are as self-contained as installments of an old-school sitcom. Watch them out of order, and little is lost in terms of continuity or character, which may be part of the point, since the series centers on two "background artists" who rarely display the potential to evolve beyond their nagging prejudices and weakness for self-humiliation. On "The Difficult Second Album," a making-of featurette included on the DVD, Gervais jokes that the difference between his Extras character and his officious boss in The Office is that he got rid of the beard and the tie. Otherwise, the comedic repertoire is pretty much the same.
Keep scrolling for more great stories from A.V. Club.