Thursday, January 11, 2007

Ricky Gervais' Recipe For Success

He talks about the joys of doing just six episodes at a time and ending a series before people get sick of it.
"I don't know if I can brag about the body of work because I have only done 15 hours of TV," he added. "But what I can be proud of is the batting average. I knew the batting average would be higher if I didn't do as much."
Lazy sod. Why not just do ONE brilliant episode and then quit forever? Hell, why not do a tantalizing, genius opening bit that seems to set up a show, then refuse to make the show, post the bit online and be hailed forever. Batting 1.000 isn't so impressive if you only ever took one swing of the bat. (I'm teasing of course. It is an entirely different beast to create 12 episodes over a few years and then walk away as opposed to the American model of 22 episodes a year for six or seven or more years. But brilliance is brilliance and I'll take "The Office" and "Fawlty Towers' over most American sitcoms any day.)

No comments: