10 Unsung TV Characters Who Completely Save Their Show

7. Darren Lamb - Extras

The Characters Everyone Talks About: Andy, and the celebrity cameos. Andy Millman is a jobbing extra, later a massively unpopular sitcom star, who acts as the straight-man in a world of unintentionally hilarious celebrities, from Patrick Stewart, who elaborately plans to see ladies naked, to Chris Martin, who perpetually plugs Coldplay's Greatest Hits at every opportunity. Perhaps the most underrated character of the piece though is Stephen Merchant's character Darren Lamb, Andy's hapless agent, who is a buffoon and completely, wonderfully unaware of it. His interplay with Shaun "Barry" Williamson is inspired, he has no idea just how tactless he is, he's terrible at his job and he's childishly excited about the most ridiculous of things. Darren is perhaps best summed up in the final episode of Series 1 when he borrows an "erotic" pen from Barry, before being caught with it by Andy, and then showing it to Robert De Niro of all people ("Here, you're a man of the world, take a look at this..."). Gervais and Merchant paint a rather bleak, nasty, fame-obsessed and name-orientated showbiz world, and as Andy sinks further into obscurity, the show could have become fairly heavy if it wasn't for Merchant's consistent humour. Extras is much his genius as Gervais's.