The Ricky Gervais Show / An Idiot Abroad

The Ricky Gervais Show (1998-2011); Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Karl Pilkington

The Ricky Gervais Show is a comedy radio show in the UK starring Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington, later adapted into a podcast and a television series. Despite being named after the more famous Gervais, it mostly revolves around the life and ideas of Karl Pilkington. The show started in August 2001 on Xfm, and aired in weekly periods for months at a time throughout 2002, 2003, 2004, and mid-2005. In November 2005, Guardian Unlimited offered the show as a podcast series of 12 shows. Throughout January and February 2006, the podcast was consistently ranked the number one podcast in the world; it appeared in the 2007 Guinness World Record for the world's most downloaded podcast, having gained an average of 261,670 downloads per episode during its first month. According to the BBC, by September 2006, the podcasts of the series had been downloaded nearly 18 million times. As of March 2011, the podcast has been downloaded over 300 million times. An animated series based on the podcast and adapted for television debuted for HBO in the United States and Channel 4 in the UK in 2010.

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An Idiot Abroad (2010-2012); Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant

An Idiot Abroad is a British travel documentary comedy television series broadcast on Sky One, as well as a series of companion books published by Canongate Books, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington. The ongoing theme of both the television series and the books is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel, so Merchant and Gervais make him travel while they stay in the United Kingdom and monitor his progress.

Originally developed under the working title Karl Pilkington's Seven Wonders of the World, An Idiot Abroad documents Karl Pilkington's journeys to foreign countries under the guise of visiting the New Seven Wonders of the World. Though the New Seven Wonders of the World include the Colosseum in Rome, this is not one of Pilkington's destinations, Gervais and Merchant feeling Karl would be too comfortable in Italy; instead he visits the Great Pyramids in Egypt (which is the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to remain intact). Most of each episode focuses on Pilkington's reactions to cultural differences and idiosyncrasies in the countries he visits. Gervais and Merchant call Pilkington during each trip, to assign him tasks often not related to why he believed he was visiting the country. These include training as a luchador, travelling the desert on a camel, and dancing with a samba school in a Carnival parade. It was confirmed by the show's producers, Mentorn Media, that Pilkington has no prior warning about these situations. The camera man coaxes him along. Gervais commented: "This is a [more real] documentary than most others you'll ever see on television. We don't plan it, he doesn't know what's going to happen." Pilkington is joined by actor Warwick Davis for the third series.

A book entitled The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington was published shortly after the series. It was authored by Pilkington and gives a deeper insight into his feelings on what he was experiencing.

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RSS FEED GUIDE
--- THE RICKY GERVAIS SHOW ---
- Season 1: Xfm Radio Series 0 "The Early Shows" (1998)
- Season 2: Xfm Radio Series 1 (2001-2002)
- Season 3: Xfm Radio Series 2 (2002-2003)
- Season 4: Xfm Radio Series 3 (2003-2004)
- Season 5: Xfm Radio Series 4 (2005)
- Season 6: The Guardian Podcast Series 1 (2005-2006)
- Season 7: Radio 2 Holiday Shows (2005)
- Season 8: The Guardian Podcast Series 2 (2006)
- Season 9: The Guardian Podcast Series 3 (2006)
- Season 10: The Guardian Podcast Series 4 "The Podfather" (2006)
- Season 11: Fame Special (2007)
- Season 12: Bonus Podcast (2007)
- Season 13: NME Radio Show (2008)
- Season 14: The Guardian Podcast Series 5 (2008)
- Season 15: The Ricky Gervais Guide to... Series 1 (2008-2009)
- Season 16: The Ricky Gervais Guide to... Series 2 (2009-2011)
- Season 17: A Day in the Life of Karl (2010)
- Season 18: Bonus Content and Compilations
--- AN IDIOT ABROAD ---
- Season 19: Sky1 Series 1 (2010)
- Season 20: Sky1 Series 2 (2011)
- Season 21: Sky1 Series 3 (2012)