Two HBO shows try to connect TV, Web

“The Ricky Gervais Show,’’ at 9, is an attempt to give the world more of the increasingly popular Gervais, the creator of the British “The Office’’ and “Extras’’ and this year’s Golden Globes host. Since 2001, Gervais, his comedy partner Stephen Merchant, and producer Karl Pilkington have been chatting together for what started as a radio show and is now a much-downloaded podcast. In the podcast, the three men tell raucous stories and riff on the news, with the simple-minded Pilkington generally serving as the butt of the jokes. He’s the jester.

Alas, HBO has come up with a dull, unimaginative interpretation of the podcast, essentially giving us animated versions of the three men sitting in a sound booth talking into microphones. As Gervais, Merchant, and Pilkington natter on, the animators illustrate moments in their conversation. For example, at one point Gervais refers to “the ramblings of someone you’d find by themselves in a hospital eating flies’’ and the show flashes to an image of a sad patient eating flies.

There’s no story line involved, just animated talking heads peppered with little animated bits. The chatter is amusing, in its way, as Pilkington talks himself into ever-more stupid corners. He delivers his ignorant theories - about a monkey flying a space capsule to the moon, for instance, or that people should die in their late 70s so a baby can crawl out of their bodies - with the kind of twisted logic that is awesome to behold. On a podcast, it works, drawing your imagination into bizarre places as you listen. But accompanied by such static imagery, Pilkington’s unique idiocy loses its allure.