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The week ahead: how Ricky fell for Marge
Conrad Astley21/ 4/2006
THE rise and rise of Ricky Gervais has been one of the most
satisfying things to watch on British TV over the last few
years.
While fellow roly-poly funnyman Peter Kay has plummeted towards the
lowest common denominator, with the dire Max And Paddy's Road To
Nowhere, Ricky's quality control seems slightly stricter.
So when he hooked up with fellow comedy genius Matt Groening to
write an episode of
The Simpsons (Sunday, Sky One)
surely nothing could go wrong.
Gervais, who described meeting the cartoon's creator as like being
granted an audience with the Pope, came up with an episode in which
Homer and Marge take part in Wife Swap.
Enter Charles, an English ex-pat who immediately falls in love with
Marge because she's the only woman that's ever been nice to
him.
Gervais plays the part and, in David Brent style, accom- panies
himself on the acoustic guitar singing an embarrassing ballad to
the blue-haired lady, while his character wears a dressing gown.
This cannot be anything other than pure comedy gold. The only
problem is, if you haven't got Sky, you've only the weekend to buy
that cable package or will have to wait another couple of years to
see it.
"For us to live any other way was nuts. To us those goody-good
people who took the subway to work and worried about bills were
dead. They were suckers. If we wanted something, we just took
it."
So said Ray Liotta, playing Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's
Goodfellas. The film remains, after all the uncomfortable questions
about whether it glorifies violence and organised crime, one of the
most quotable movies of all time.
The only problem is, although it shows Henry having to become one
of those "goody-good people" after turning police informant in
1980, it gives you no idea what happened next.
The Real Goodfella (Monday, Channel 4) fills in
the blanks. Henry has spent his life being hunted across America,
turning into an alcoholic. Luckily, the people he "ratted" on are
now dead, so the conversation and the whisky flowed easily when
they met him in a Nebraska motel.
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