Extras

2005-2007. British sitcom created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who also star in it as bit-part actor Andy Millman and part-time talent agent Darren Lamb. Very funny, very postmodern, very meta.

The series chronicles the lives of Millmann and his friend Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen), who take extra roles on TV and film productions and try to stay afloat while they are waiting for their big break. Each episode takes us to the set of a new film; there, the protagonists meet real-life stars whose idiosyncratic behaviour undermines their public image. Kate Winslet, we learn, is shooting a Holocaust movie just so that she will finally win an Oscar (Series 1, ep. 3). Venerable actor Ian McKellen lets Millmann in on a big secret: he is not really a magician. His performance as Gandalf on Lord of the Rings, he happily divulges, was the result of a script that told him what lines to say and markings on the floor that told him where to stand (Series 2, ep. 5).

Unlike The Office, Extras is not a mockumentary; it is rather a satire about fame that parodies common expectations of stardom. Nonetheless, the show tests the boundaries of reality and representation by stacking different layers of fiction: there is the story universe, in which Millmann and Jacobs exist and go to work on film sets; there are the new films, which are fictitious from everybody's point of view (although they are actual films in the story universe, whereas they will never come to our cinemas); finally, there are the star actors who exist both here and in the story universe, but whose real behaviour and character traits remain elusive. As celebrities, their identities are inevitably medialised and thus possibly hyperreal - empty signifiers without referent. In the second series another twist was added: Andy Millman writes and stars in his own sitcom, a very old-fashioned and silly affair called When the Whistle Blows, which, however, is loved by the public.