What a funny show this could be if instead of formulaically abusing Karl they played along (ironically) or in some way added to the narrative instead of lazily shooting a very large obvious fish in a very small barrel.
The way it stands it's as dumbed down as a laugh track.
OP has made a very good point, but used a terrible title for it, thereby spoiling the whole thing. Personally, I despise any sentence in the form "All X are Y". Some brits are endowed with irony, other aren't.
All this diverts the attention to what OP has instead gotten right, ie. that the show would be a lot less cringe-worthy if it were less about systematically insulting Pilkington (the sentence "shooting a very large obvious fish in a very small barrel" is brilliant, I think) and more about playing along with what comes out of Pilkington's wonderful, wonderful mind, with the occasional jab.
Yeah, completely ignoring the OP's broad generalisations (and yet another tedious, UK vs US culture argument), I do sometimes get annoyed with Gervais's constant interruptions and immediate dismissals of Karl's comments (and I've noticed Stephen Merchant getting a little annoyed with it too from time to time). I agree the show is better when they let Karl speak a bit more freely and play along.
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