Stephen Merchant Wanted To Do ‘Click & Collect’ To Have A Christmas Special He Could Watch With His Family

Seventeen years ago, Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais premiered a humble BBC show about a paper company in Slough led by a narcissistic idiot named David Brent. That show was, of course, The Office, which became a massive worldwide hit and was adapted into versions in a dozen different countries (including the U.S. version which ran for nine seasons and is STILL one of the most popular shows on Netflix.)

Merchant is no stranger to the holiday special, having made one for The Office and Extras. But Click & Collect, debuting on December 24 on the BBC One and BritBox, is a standalone special. Merchant plays an uptight bloke named Andrew, who goes on a Christmas Eve cross-UK quest with his grating neighbor Dev (Asim Chaudhry) to pick up a Sparklehoof the Unicorn Princess toy that Andrew’s daughter desperately wants. As you’d expect, lots of mishaps happen on the way, but the two find out that they’re more alike than different.

Merchant spoke with Decider about why he wanted to do a traditional Christmas special, why the Christmas special is so important in the UK, his chemistry with Chaudhry, and if there are any plans to work with Gervais again.

DECIDER: What prompted you to do a standalone holiday special at this point?

STEPHEN MERCHANT: The tradition of the one-off Christmas film, or holiday special, in England in particular, was a longstanding thing that I thought that would always be … you know, I was one of those TV lovers who would grab the TV Guide, and kind of circle the shows you were gonna [watch]. When I was growing up, I don’t know how old you are, but you know, it was before any kind of TiVo, or catch up TV, right? So you made a date with something, maybe you’d stick a VHS tape in and tape it, but on the whole, you made an appointment. And there was always [specials] that did comedy, that just kind of came and went at Christmas. You either caught it or you didn’t, and if you did, it was sort of Christmas highlight, and then you went back to your regular programming. So, I liked the fact that it felt like part of that tradition.

It was a family piece, it wasn’t too edgy, it was something that I could watch with my niece and nephew, and my parents. Christmas, as I got older, was always like trying to cherry pick the things we’d all enjoy, and wouldn’t offend grandma. So I just liked the idea thatthere was something quite pleasant about that Christmas, seasonal thing. And they sent me this to do, and I was just there as an actor.

You talked about the tradition of the holiday special in England. How is it different than what we see in the U.S.?

Well my experience of American Christmas TV is that it’s not quite the must watch, prestige kind of day that it is in the UK. I don’t know if that’s true, if I’ve misrepresented it. But in England, from Christmas Eve to New Year, is where the world slows down, and people sit, and they eat, and they watch TV. And that’s always been the tradition as long as I can remember. And very often there would be a Christmas special of your favorite shows, you know, whether it was British classic like Only Fools And Horses, or there was a show I liked in the ’80s, called Minder, about this kind of con artist guy, and they do like an hour and a half movie.

And so there was always this idea of you know, ITV, and BBC, the two big networks, being rivals for eyeballs. And so, when we did, for instance, The Office Christmas special, then the Extras Christmas special, it was bleeding into that tradition that we knew it was sort of … it was kind of event TV in an era, increasingly, where that doesn’t really happen anymore.

There would be a Doctor Who special, and an EastEnders special. Among that, there would often just be one-offs, where they’d get comedy stars to team up, and have some kind of novelty that would attract the viewer. I don’t know, my sense is it’s not quite the same in the U.S.

Had you ever worked with Asim before this show?

I hadn’t, but I had seen his show, People Just Do Nothing, and as I joked elsewhere, that’s in the press release, of all The Office rip offs, it’s one of the best. Then I could tell, just from what I’d seen him doing, in both that show and other things, that I knew I would have an simpatico senses of humor. I knew I’d get on with him, I could just tell that instinctively, and that was the case. I think he and I really enjoyed ourselves, and we had a lot of fun trying to just kind of make each other laugh, and goof around. And so I was very pleased that my suspicions were correct.

What’s the funniest thing that happened that didn’t make it to the special?

Well, there was quite a lot of just trying to make each other laugh. I did a whole rant about Brexit. I was doing kind of a fake phone call, where I’m pretending to call the council [to get Asim’s Christmas lights turned off], where I do a whole thing where I was kind of accusing the council of … it was all about Brexit, it was all because of Brussels, and once we left the EU, you know, there wouldn’t be this kind of problem again.

I was just trying to make him laugh, and he would do similar stuff like that. And there was the thing when he opens a bottle of soda in the car. That scene took a number of takes. And I think they included it in there, but there was a moment where he said he could switch on the windscreen wipers, and I said, “No, they’re on the outside.” You know, which was fun. So a lot of it, they do a cut just before we start laughing. A particular part is when he’s doing kind of rapping, beatbox, into my ear, which was almost impossible to get through. And that was really tough.

The show is a traditional buddy road trip plot like Planes, Trains & Automobiles. How did you and Asim make it fresh for 2018?

Hopefully, both the way Asim and I perform it is our own kind of take on things, you know? I mean, I’m certainly indebted to not only people like Steve Martin, but also John Cleese, and people like that, who were my comedy heroes when I was younger. So if I’m channeling some of that, then I have no shame in that. But in a way, like I said, I was improvising stuff, doing stuff about Brexit, and you know, whatever else.

But to me, the part of what was appealing about it, was it was quite traditional, you know? Like it felt like a traditional Christmas story in a way. You kind of see the grinchy guy who learns his lesson. I think we tried to be playful with it here and there, so you know maybe we fell for a little of [Christmas magic] outside of the shopping mall, but actually, [the guy who looks like Santa] is just a guy taking a piss against a tree. He definitely is just a homeless guy. We play with the idea that I make a big, impassioned speech to try to rally people to my cause, and they just turn their back on me.

So we’re trying to play with some of those moments that you’ve seen in those Hallmark-y Christmas movies. But in a sense, my niece and nephew are just getting to a point where they start watching that stuff. And you know, sometimes if you try to be too cynical with that stuff, then you just lose some of what’s fun for people, for the younger people who haven’t seen it before. S

I like when [a special] has something a little old fashioned. It’s just like whenever I see a teen movie, I think, “Well, I’ve seen this before,” but if I was 15 again, this would be new for me, this would be exciting. One of the pleasures for me was leaning into the traditional bit. And then also just hopefully the rapport that Asim and I have is fresh, because you haven’t seen us together, and doing our schtick.

My wife misses Hello Ladies a lot. Any thought at all of that coming back, or is that kind of closure, five years ago, whenever that movie was, that that closed it out?

I mean, I would love to do more with it now. In fact, I have something that I think would be particularly interesting to do in this post #MeToo era; you’ve got a man in L.A., and him kind of dating and trying to navigate that world would be kind of fascinating, I think. I just love working with those guys, particularly Christine Woods, but I thought, you know, it’s funny actually, I’ve subsequently read that there’s been a sort of renaissance of the rom-com, on Netflix and the like, and you know, the Hello movie was very much my attempt to do a little rom-com wrap up of the show. And I was very pleased with that, I thought that turned out well, so you know, fun though it was, I sort of feel like it’s moment has happened, and so there’s no plans to do more of it.

The American version of The Office is still one of the most popular shows on Netflix. Any thought that when you and Ricky created the original close to 20 years ago now that it would have this kind of long legacy in the UK, America and elsewhere?

No idea whatsoever. I think we were just trying to make something that was appealing to us. We used to talk about how we’d be lucky if this got a million viewers, but we wanted that million viewers to be our absolute die hard fans of the show. And everyone else kind of never got it, but that there would be this core fan base that just completely dialed into it. And obviously we got that and then some. The thing that surprises me most about the Netflix success of reruns of the American Office, is just I keep hearing anecdotally that it’s appealing to teenagers, 15, 16 year olds, who aren’t even in the office workplace yet. So I don’t know what it is about the show that’s chiming with them, maybe it’s ’cause they know that’s coming down the pipe for them. I don’t know.

Any plans to work with Ricky in the future?

If the right project comes along, absolutely, you know, I love working with him, but I just made this movie [Fighting With My Family] that’s coming out in February, which I wrote and directed, and so we’ve sort of been amped into our own tunes of late, but if the right things comes along, then that would be great.

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Click & Collect will premiere on BritBox on Monday, December 24.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.