Ricky Gervais – Science: Colston Hall

There's multi-tasking and then there's spreading yourself too thinly.

With his career plate-spinning activities currently running to hosting the Golden Globe awards, continuing his record-breaking podcast series as well as writing, producing and directing Cemetery Junction – a new movie collaboration with Stephen Merchant – Ricky Gervais has set himself a stiff challenge in finding the time to create a fully-realised fourth stand-up show.

And at times it really showed. Nominally titled Science, save for the Dr Frankenstein laboratory stage set and a cursory nod to the subject's description on Wikipedia, this was really just another platform for the comedy behemoth's defiantly non-PC rants.

But first, the appetiser. Laid-back Canadian Stewart Francis provided the support, which cast him as a 18-certificate Tim Vine or deadpan Steven Wright. Now rapidly making a name for himself on the TV comedy merry-go-round of Mock The Week and Have I Got New For You etc, Francis hit his targets more often than not, although his relentless one-liners could get wearying for anything longer than his allotted 20 minutes.

After a booming introduction which rolled off his industry awards with mock self-importance, Gervais bounded on to the strains of The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again. It's perhaps an ironic choice of song, as previous reviews of this show have been less than glowing to say the least.

If it has dented Gervais' titanic self-belief then he wasn't letting on. He's gradually grown into his role as a stand-up comic, but it is by no means a natural fit. His three earlier shows – Animals, Politics and Fame – while not wholly bounded by their titles, at least had coherence. Here, it merely played it lip service.

An extended routine on fat people spun off from an anecdote about watching an open-air concert by Ken Dodd in Regents Park before we alighted on the centrepiece of the show – a sharp rebuttal of the Biblical story of Noah told through an old school book.

In part, Gervais aligns himself with the shock-tactics approach of Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle. But whereas those comics ride roughshod over any notion of political correctness, whenever Ricky comes out with something particularly foul – and there were a handful of non-repeatable corkers here – he goes on to examine his motivations behind the jokes, too, just in case we miss the "irony".

With much shock indignation now mixed in with what has become his trademark vocal tics – the ooohs, ahhs and mumbles – it strikes me that Gervais is gradually morphing into Frankie Howerd. And that's not a criticism by the way.

As a philosophy graduate, you'd expect to find Gervais dealing with big ideas. He touches on them in Science, coming up with a smart analysis of the boundaries of humour which notes that his job as a stand-up is to make people both think and laugh. The trouble is, we didn't do enough of either this time around.

6/10

STEVE HARNELL