C4 lines up Gervais comedy

Ricky Gervais has filmed a new comedy pilot for UK terrestrial Channel 4, while also prepping a second season of BBC spoof documentary series Life’s Too Short.

Gervais will take the lead role in Derek, about a confused carer who works in a nursing home and originally created as a sketch character. Karl Pilkington, Gervais’s friend who starred in travel series An Idiot Abroad, will also appear in his first major acting role.

Gervais wrote on his blog that the pilot was non-broadcast, while Channel 4 has not yet confirmed if it will be commissioned for a series.

Meanwhile, Gervais, who also starred in and wrote The Office and Extras, took to social networking site Twitter to say a second season of Life’s Too Short, starring Warwick Davis as the owner of an acting agency for dwarf actors, was “planned for spring 2013.”

This is despite poor ratings for the first season of the BBC2 show, which launched to 2.38 million viewers but ended with 1.32 million.

Gervais also tweeted that a one-off episode of Sky1’s An Idiot Abroad, subtitled The Short Way Round, was planned for the end of 2012 but that there would not be a third season.

An Idiot Abroad and Life’s Too Short are both distributed by Tinopolis-owned Mentorn International.