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.
[4] A cult following for the Xfm radio shows and podcasts has ensued in the following years, starting since their original airings and maintaining a strong amount of fans, the most popular forum used to discuss the show being the subreddit "r/rickygervais" on the popular news and media platform Reddit, with roughly 175,000 members as of November 2024.
Their show was broadcast from January to August 1998 from 4–6pm on Sundays, and only featured Gervais and Merchant (before their collaboration on The Office).
[5] Gervais and Merchant returned to Xfm in August 2001, after the first series of The Office had been broadcast, with Pilkington brought in as producer.
[6] The show was originally just billed as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and Pilkington's presence was not acknowledged on posters or other advertisements.
Gervais and Merchant only occasionally called for him to weigh in with his thoughts, while the two mostly talked to each other, with the links between songs comprising only about 30 minutes of the show's 2-hour run time.
As Pilkington's personality moved to the forefront, the talk portion of the show expanded to roughly an hour per 2-hour broadcast.
While the show relied largely upon a stream-of-consciousness format, Pilkington made attempts to keep things more conventional by insisting on running contests and airing pre-recorded segments and regular "features".
[citation needed] With the second series of The Office complete, Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington returned to XFM in August of 2002 to resume their 2-hour Saturday afternoon broadcasts.
This was the longest stretch of XFM shows, running 51 weeks until August 2003 when Gervais and Merchant again went on hiatus, this time to record the final episode of The Office.
During the year, Gervais and Merchant began saying on-air that Pilkington had become the star of the show and theorized that most listeners were tuning in to hear his anecdotes and perspectives.
Pilkington, however, grew increasingly frustrated with Gervais's antagonism towards him, and over the final few shows, suggested that he did not wish to continue.
This was a frequent topic of contention during this run with Gervais repeatedly accusing Pilkington of being lazy for demanding an entire day off in exchange for producing the 2-hour Saturday afternoon broadcast.
The show relies heavily on the wit and bizarre theories of Pilkington, who was then unemployed, having left his job as radio producer at XFM.
[citation needed] At the end of the sixth episode, Gervais and Merchant agreed to put the show on an indefinite hiatus.
[12] A special podcast was made available as a giveaway to people who went to see Gervais' stand-up tour Fame, which played from January to April 2007.
[13] A new series, called The Ricky Gervais Guide to... featured the trio discussing various topics in their entirety during 50 min episodes.
The fourth video podcast features a controversial audio advertisement for The Prostate Cancer Charity and Gervais talking about his Aerial Award.
The seventh podcast was about a story Pilkington told in series one, episode one, about his bizarre journey in an abandoned asylum and rehabilitation clinic.
[19] The show features Gervais and Pilkington engaging in English dialogue, and translated captions have been provided in many languages by his fans.
[22] The show consists of past audiobooks with animation, drawn in a style similar to classic era Hanna-Barbera cartoons, describing jokes in a literal context.