Ricky Gervais ends animated show

Ricky Gervais is calling a halt to his animated Ricky Gervais Show and An Idiot Abroad.

He says he wants to concentrate on his full series of Derek, a new audiobook project ‘with video’ and stand-up dates.

On his blog, he said he wanted to end The Ricky Gervais Show, an HBO series made from his old podcasts, after 39 episodes.

Gervais wrote: ‘I don't think I'm going to do a fourth series of The Ricky Gervais Show.

‘39 episodes is more than I've ever done for any other project and I don't want to push my luck. I think the show has steadily grown in both quality and popularity and I'd love to go out on a high so to speak. My worry is that as we've used up all the best material we'd have to record hours and hours of new stuff and it might ruin the naivety of the whole thing.

‘Never say never though, like The Office. But certainly for now.’

He also announced that he and Karl Pilkington have decided to end An Idiot Abroad after the two specials currently being recorded with Warwick Davis.

As for projects in the pipeline, he confirmed that he will be shooting another six episodes of Derek – and revealed that he has just finished writing the finale of Life's Too Short, which will be filmed in the New Year ready for broadcast around Easter.

He added that he was excited about his new audiobook idea, which he said would be filmed ‘not just audio’, although he did not know whether it would be for TV or the internet .

‘We've recorded one and I'm fucking buzzing about it,’ Gervais said. ‘It's a bit different and I can't tell you too much about it as it's so easy to rip off the idea. So beautifully simple...'

Published: 15 Jun 2012