Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale

USA TodayRobert 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).

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

It's a magnificent end to an underappreciated series.

VarietyBrian 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.

Newark Star-LedgerAlan 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.

NewsdayDiane 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.

LA WeeklyRobert 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

Los Angeles TimesMary 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.

Boston GlobeMatthew 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.

TimeJames 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.

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.

Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob 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.

The New York TimesNeil Genzlinger

Not great, maybe, but a solid sign-off, and one that’s not afraid to let you know that the series is over.

Orlando SentinelHal 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.