Critic Reviews
| 100 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
If Gervais' well-deserved Emmy victory this year came as a surprise to you, this special shows why the voters got it right (for a change). |
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
It's a magnificent end to an underappreciated series. |
| 90 |
Variety Brian Lowry
The Brits certainly have a luxury in their freedom to craft little gems such as this that need only generate a dozen or so installments, but that hardly diminishes what Gervais and Merchant have accomplished by again living up to the elements in this project's title: It's extra, it's a finale and it is, indeed, special. |
| 90 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
The jokes are funnier--though often painfully so, in true Gervais fashion--and the satire darker....Even in a normal season, I suspect I'd consider it one of the best things I'd seen all year. |
| 80 |
Newsday Diane Werts
Like "The Office," Gervais' Extras concludes with a moment of truth, clarity and poignance that only reminds us how these emotional elements have been downplayed in the Americanization of Gervais and Merchant's work. |
| 80 |
LA Weekly Robert Abele
The opening shot of the Extras series finale airing on HBO Sunday marks another hilarious humiliation for Ricky Gervais’s aspiring-actor character Andy Millman |
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
The timing, like the show, is strange and wonderful. It falls right in the center of the annual end-of-the-year treacle fest and, boy, is it a bracing change of pace. |
| 80 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
The 80-minute finale is the perfect cap to the series, an ugly yet emotionally resonant morality play about the price of selling out. |
| 80 |
Time James Poniewozik
If you loved Extras, you will love the Extras finale. If, like me, you think that Extras was a perfectly funny show in which Gervais used his talent on a subject (celebrity culture) and a milieu much more obvious and familiar than the world he created at the Wernham Hogg paper company, then you will think that of the finale. |
| 75 |
New York Daily News
The ridiculousness of celebrity media has been a primary target of "Extras" all along, and the show continues to dig quality jokes out of that fertile field. But thanks largely to Jensen, it also digs a little deeper into its own characters this time around, and that's a nice holiday gift for all of us. |
| 70 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
In Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale, Gervais and Merchant, who wrote and directed the series-ender, do redeem Andy, which may come as a disappointment to darker-hearted fans. |
| 70 |
The New York Times Neil Genzlinger
Not great, maybe, but a solid sign-off, and one that’s not afraid to let you know that the series is over. |
| 40 |
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
The program, which debuts at 9 p.m. Sunday, is too long and lumpy at 90 minutes. Preachy commentary and awkward drama clash with scintillating comedy. |
|
