David Brent does Comic Relief

The highlight of last night's Red Nose Day telethon was undoubtedly Ricky Gervais reprising his breakthrough role as The Office's David Brent, for a ten-minute sketch revealing what the character's been doing over the 10 years he's been off-screen (ignoring a few cameos in the US Office). The sketch itself was perhaps a bit underwhelming, as it started to bore me after a few minutes, but it was nevertheless fun to see Brent again. I was pleased to see Gervais can still play the character, because after an extended break there's often a danger of a performer copying everyone else's impression. So even if the actual sketch wasn't laugh-out-loud stuff, it felt like a fair catchup with one of my favourite sitcom characters.

The accompanying music video with rapper Doc Brown, where Brent upstages his client singing "Equality Street", was thankfully much better. A genuinely catchy reggae song with amusing moments from the ever-deluded Brent, filmed in pretentious monochrome. Gervais controversially chose RND to announce that David Brent will be returning for more sketches, via his YouTube channel. I'm hoping what follows will be even better, aiming for the gold-standard of Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge webseries.

What do you think? Was David Brent's return a success, or a disappointment?