TVSquad

Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler of HBO held an executive session at the beginning of HBO's star-studded presentation. Among the news:

• The entire Sunday summer lineup: Entourage, True Blood, and Hung will be coming back next summer.
• They've ordered an animated series from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant based on their podcasts with the ever-entertaining Karl Pilkington.
• On a third season of Flight of the Conchords: "We're ready when they're ready."
• The pilot of Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorsese, has been delivered to HBO. It will be picked up based on what they see. They like what they see so far.
• No more Little Britain USA, but they are working with the producers to create specials with all-new characters.

More coming. Stay tuned to our Twitter feed for the latest updates.

Karl Pilkington, longtime friend and podcasting costar of Ricky Gervais, has a head like an orange. He possesses very little education, an extremely pessimistic take on life, a sad obsession with insects and a perpetually confused world view.

But, even with all that going against him, he holds a share of the Guinness Book of World Records title for most popular podcast with Gervais and Stephen Merchant -- and he's about to star in a new animated series on HBO.

According to Variety, The Office creator will bring The Ricky Gervais Show to TV in a series of 13 animated half-hour episodes. In audio form, the Gervais, Merchant and Pilkington formula features Gervais throwing a vast variety of topics at the intellectually challenged Pilkington to see what sense he can make of them.

Does Ricky Gervais have a short attention span? I ask because he only seems to do things for two 'seasons' and then move on to something else. The original version of The Office only lasted two seasons and he recently said Extras will end after this season. Now there's word that his incredibly popular/hilarious podcast is done, too. According to BBC News, Gervais said he and Office co-creator Stephen Merchant were just trying out something new to see if they could cut out the middle man.

There were more than 8 million downloads of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast. The first twelve episodes were free and the second twelve had a fee. In typical Gervais fashion, he says of one of his co-hosts, "Karl never has to work again and I believe that maybe he won't."

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of your favorite shows, in order, every week.

(S01E02) In the very beginning of this episode, we saw David Brent showing a hot, new, female employee (whom we'd later know as Donna) around his office. To work his humor, he pretended to throw his office answering machine out the window, jokingly frustrated with all the messages. As he started to set it back down, the machine slipped out of his hand and fell on the floor, clattering next to the trash can. The sheer seamlessness of this brief moment (and Brent's frantic mumbling) still throws me into hysterics. I love it when a moment looks so organic that I can't tell if it was improvised, accidental, or geniusly scripted.

You're gonna have to, if you want to hear it. When Ricky and his comedian buddies Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington (aka "The Village Idiot") launched their hilarious podcast in December, they flew to the top of the iTunes Top 100 list. Their first twelve episodes were sponsored by the Guardian, and therefore free to all of us. This time, their "second season" is going to be through Audible and the monthly subscription will cost at least $7 for four half-hour shows. You'll still be able to get the podcast through iTunes, you'll just have to pay for it the same way you pay for other Audible content like NPR'S This American Life and Fresh Air. By the way, there's a preview of the new season over at Gervais' website.

Obviously, this is a very big deal. This is the first podcast in iTunes to charge a subscription. While other podcasts are sponsored or get donations from listeners, this one will be the first to answer the question that so many business people want to know: will people pay for podcasts?

So... will you pay for Ricky Gervais' podcast?

[Thanks for the tip, Doc!]