The characters in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s shows don’t suffer from a fear of falling—it’s too late for that. Instead, the predominant malaise is a fear of falling further, an abiding anxiety over what last reserves of dignity, pride and self-respect will have to be sacrificed to get through another day.

The British version of the Office is a paralyzed place. The workers hate the day-to-day futility of their work, but they’re terrified of being fired and lack the conviction that circumstances will be different anywhere else. They’re stand-ins for the oceans of workers who spend their days killing time. There’s nothing useful for them to do, but they need to keep showing up every day anyway.

This paralysis extends to every member of the cast. Tim, a sales representative who serves as the show’s protagonist, speaks of going to college but accepts a promotion to senior sales clerk instead. He turns 30 during the show’s first season, and in a moment that captures the pain of dreams left to wither, receives a baseball cap with a built-in radio as a present from his mother. “I like ballet,” he responds, “I love the novels of Proust, I love the work of Alan Delon, and I think that’s what influenced her buying me Hat FM. I like the radio too!”

Dawn, the receptionist, sums up the weight of compromise without illusion in the show’s first season when she explains, “I always wanted to be a children’s illustrator and when people said, ‘What do you do?’ I would say, ‘Well, I’m an illustrator, but I do some reception work for a little bit of extra cash.’ So, for years, I was an illustrator who did some reception work. Then Lee thought it would be a good idea for us both to get full-time jobs and then you’re knackered after work and it’s hard to do illustrating. So now, when people ask me what I do, I say I’m a receptionist.”

Even the obnoxiousness of Gervais’ character, boss David Brent, is a front used to convince himself that he’s meaningful. Brent’s disregard for the work he’s supposed to oversee is made clear in his constant disruptions and pranks. The few moments he comes alive are when he plays the guitar or recites poetry, old pursuits he’s long abandoned. He pursues both too earnestly in an attempt to convince himself he hasn’t sold out, and the results make everyone cringe, partially in the recognition that they’re on the path to becoming David Brents themselves, replacing their passions with chatter and bookkeeping.

These same agonies infuse Gervais’ new show, Extras. In the show’s second season, Gervais’ character Andy Millman has found success—the BBC is producing his sitcom—but it spirals away from him as higher-ups reduce it to a farce, giving his character a ridiculous wig and glasses and reducing him to an inane catchphrase. He tries to rebel, even threatening to walk off the set, but is forced to knuckle under by his producer in a demeaning public scene for fear of losing everything. The show’s a hit, but he becomes a joke, vulnerable to the scrutiny of celebrity without taking any pride in what he’s accomplished.

Every episode of the series is centered on a celebrity guest poking fun at themselves—Kate Winslett, Ben Stiller, Orlando Bloom, David Bowie, Daniel Radcliffe and more. But while in the hands of most creators the show would turn into a kind of Ocean’s 11, with the actors puffing up their good natures and getting together to shoot the shit afterwards, Extras doesn’t allow the biggest star to drive the show’s perspective. Instead it cleaves to the point-of-view of its average viewer, exploring how promising ideas are dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

While the comedy of Gervais and Merchant often resembles Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm in the painful-to-watch humiliations it inflicts upon its characters, Gervais’ show has the benefit of knowing that not everything is a joke. There are stakes here. While Larry David will go on being Larry David regardless of who he offends, Andy Millman is in danger of disappearing entirely, becoming unrecognizable in the show that’s been foisted upon him.

That’s really painful to watch, and the pain in Millman’s compromises resonates in every viewer who regrets their own missed opportunities. As the theme song for Gervais’ joke comedy sums up: “Whatever happened to my dreams, is this the life I chose? The highlight of my ruddy day is when the whistle blows!”