Comedy genius Ricky Gervais becomes animated for 3's new series The Ricky Gervais Show.

The Ricky Gervais Show features Gervais and his long-time collaborator Stephen Merchant (The Office, Extras), and revolves around the world of their unusual friend, Karl Pilkington (An Idiot Abroad).

Originally starting out as a radio program in the U.K. in 2005, Gervais and Merchant decided to turn the show into a podcast, bringing Pilkington, a radio producer they had met years earlier, along. Soon the podcasts began to focus particularly on the eccentric mind of Pilkington.

"They find him to be the funniest person in the world," The Ricky Gervais Show producer Modi Wiczyk explains. "Ricky says Karl is like crack to him."

According to Gervais and Merchant, "Karl is a man who believes that a sea lion is a cross between a fish and a dog. Hopefully, Karl will enter the pantheon of animated greats."

The podcast became wildly popular, gaining a Guinness World Record in 2007 for being the most-downloaded podcast on the Internet. Fans even began animating some of Pilkington's musings themselves, uploading the shorts to the Internet.