Last year, Ricky Gervais hosted the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards and was received with….mixed reviews. Gervais’ brass and care-free digs on the Hollywood system rocked the celebrity world and some were even “outraged” by some of the comments. Gervais’ response? He wants to do it again.

This time around, he won’t be restricted by the “tightwads” at HFPA or the network. Gervais is taking his jokes to the internet, in what some are calling a “re-dubbed livecast”. The British comedian’s plan is to do a live podcast the same night as the awards show, and have some of his friends stop by for the laughs. Here’s what Ricky had to say over at his blog.

What do you think of this?

A live 3 hour podcast during The Golden Globes. Me and a few chums (like Louis CK, Chris Rock, Karl Pilkington, John Stewart, Larry David popping in and out) doing our own alternative commentary.

People at home can have the telly on with the sound down listening to us online say things that no broadcaster could get away with. 

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I guess it’s only natural that one of the most successful podcasts out there (and if that sounds like a dubious distinction, the BBC reported that in 2006 The Ricky Gervais Show podcast had received a staggering 8,000,000 downloads) would get its own show…though for reasons I’ll go into in a bit, I’m not entirely sure why.

The new HBO show, which premieres February 19^th but is currently available for free download on iTunes, features flash animations of Office and Extras creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant antagonizing their co-host Karl Pilkington for his inane and often outlandish beliefs.

Episode #1 opens with Gervais and Merchant systematically debunking Pilkington’s assertion that technology reached its peak sometime around the turn of the 19^th Century. “What about planes?” Merchant counters, “they let you go on holiday all over the world.” “No,” Pilkington shoots back, “because you go to places where if you don’t get a shot beforehand, you can die.”

Next Pilkington proposes a biological “advance” that would allow older women to have children the moment they died. “Who would take care of them?” Merchant usefully asks.

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