Modest 'Extras' spoofs celebrities

Perhaps because it’s inevitably compared to and dwarfed by ‘‘The Office,’’ HBO’s ‘‘Extras’’ has gone fairly unnoticed. Created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant — who originated ‘‘The Office’’ on the BBC — it is indeed a smaller piece of work that could never be called groundbreaking.

But in its modest way, ‘‘Extras’’ is a fearless comedy that gives the entertainment industry a firm and much-deserved noogie. The series takes the behind-the-scenes show-business hierarchy — with stars and producers at the top and extras at the bottom — and turns it on its head. And the stars and producers don’t come out looking very good.

Last season, Gervais’s Andy Millman and his friend Maggie (Ashley Jensen) were extras — Andy called them ‘‘background artists’’ — on movie sets, where they caught untoward glimpses of self-parodying stars such as Kate Winslet and Ben Stiller.

This season, the pair still have close ego encounters, but now Andy is the creator of a BBC sitcom. While Maggie watches Orlando Bloom and Daniel Radcliffe make fools of themselves, Andy is humiliated by nervy TV producers who insist he dumb down his show. He also continues to cope with the cluelessness of his agent, played with finely crafted idiocy by Merchant.

‘‘Extras’’ is at its laugh-out-loud best as it reveals the superiority and inferiority complexes of the celebrities and the money men. In a hysterical recent episode, David Bowie impulsively wrote an ice-cold ditty about Andy — with phrases such as ‘‘little fat man’’ and ‘‘chubby little loser’’ — and sang it to his face. One of the many ironies in ‘‘Extras’’ is that the extras want to climb the ladder, but the people above them are quite unenviable, heartless, and ridiculous.

Gervais stole the original ‘‘Office’’ as the little man who put his foot in his big mouth again and again. On ‘‘Extras,’’ he is more heroic and, in Andy’s friendship with Maggie, sweet. He leaves plenty of room for the many guest stars to do themselves in, and they do so beautifully.