RICKY GERVAIS is to swap comedy for a Sopranos-style American drama after complaining that British programmes lack the ambition of their US counterparts.

Last month Gervais and Stephen Merchant, his co- writer, won the Best Comedy Series Emmy award for their successful adaptation of The Office to an American setting.

Gervais will return to British screens with a second series of Extras, the comedy series about minor supporting actors. But he said that he barely watched British television and that his future lay with the “darker” drama series that feature on American television.

HBO, the American cable network behind The Sopranos, co-produces Extras in partnership with the BBC.

The network is looking for a successor to The Sopranos, now in its last series, and Gervais could be involved in the new show.

He said: “I’d like to have a go at something more dramatic. All the things we like at the moment are coming out of America.

“There are things like The Sopranos, 24, The Shield and The Wire. These are things that we just cannot do and do not do, or anything close to it.”

With a double Golden Globes win for The Office and an “appearance” on The Simpsons, Gervais’s star is rising in Hollywood. The BBC could lose his talents if it fails to meet his artistic ambitions.

He said of his favourite American dramas: “They are innovative, audacious and taking on film.

“Those television shows are just breathtaking and shows like The Sopranos are very funny. They have comedy writers that work on the show. It’s the humour of real life.”

Even David Brent enjoyed a moment of redemption at the climax of The Office and Gervais said that he wanted a British drama to capture the “ambiguity of morality” seen in some American shows.

He said: “I just can’t remember the last time I watched a British drama. It was probably something like GBH (Alan Bleasdale’s Channel 4 political serial in 1991). It is not like I give them a go and turn them off, they just don’t come into my vision.”

Gervais later admitted that he enjoyed State of Play, the BBC One conspiracy thriller.

He and Merchant recently produced the year’s most downloaded podcast but they said that they had no plans to distribute new television shows directly over the internet.

Gervais said he was surprised that his corporate training video, made in the style of The Office, became an internet sensation. “We did a training video for Microsoft about four years ago and someone put it on the web,” he said. “It’s the most downloaded video on the web apart from porn.”

Gervais wrote The Office in the six months after being made redundant from the London radio station Xfm, where he met his co-author Stpehen Merchant.

The BBC had seen a training video made by Merchant on a director’s course in which Gervais, who had no experience of acting or writing, was asked to play a sleazy boss.

When Extras returns to BBC Two its guest stars will include the rock stars David Bowie and Chris Martin and the Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe.

The opening episode, featuring the actor Orlando Bloom, includes a swipe at the style of catchphrase comedy employed by Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show.

Gervais’s character, Andy Millman, sells a sitcom to the BBC but the producers force him to drop the script’s social observation in favour of catchprases repeated ad nauseam.

A studio audience wearing T-shirts with the slogans “I’m a lady” and “Garlic bread” laugh uproariously.

The most controversial moment is provided by the television presenter Keith Chegwin in a cameo appearance.

“Is the BBC still run by Jews and queers?” asks his disturbed character, before going on to make other derogatory remarks about homosexuals and black people. The series begins on September 14.

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