Okay, kids, we’ve got a lot of stuff to cover here, so let’s start off by just hitting the highlights of the initial HBO panel, which was simply the network’s programming group president Richard Plepler and co-president Michael Lombardo opening up the floor to questions.

* The next season of “Big Love” is shooting now and will hopefully land on the air in the first quarter of 2009.

* Larry David is currently filming a Woody Allen movie, but he’s planning to get back to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” once he’s finished with that, so fingers crossed for Season 7 in late 2009.

* There are six completed episodes of Linda Bloodworth-Thomas’s “12 Miles of Bad Road” floating around, but HBO has decided that the series isn’t right for them, so it’s anyone’s guess if, when, or where we’ll ever see it.

* There is enormous interest by Warner Bros./New Line to do another “Sex and the City” movie, and they’re trying with HBO’s help to put that together.

* David Chase is on vacation in France, but if he wants to do a “Sopranos” movie, HBO would be “delighted to explore that.”

* Pilots have been greenlit for “Treme,” dealing with post-Katrina New Orleans, “The Washingtonian,” based on a Jessica Cutler book, and one-hour drama about 1920s Atlantic City that’s written and executive-produced by Terry Winter, with Martin Scorsese also executive-producing.

* David Milch is working on a pilot called “Last of the Ninth” about New York City Police Department in the 1970s, which means that the likelihood of a “Deadwood” movie happening is slim to none.

* Both “In Treatment” and “Tell Me You Love Me” will be returning.

* The network’s upcoming miniseries, “Pacific Theater,” executive-produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, just wrapped principal photography, and should air in either late ’09 or early ’10.

* Coming soon: “Number One Lady Detective,” based on the series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.

* Also coming soon: “Hung,” a half-hour comedy with Alexander Payne directing.

* Chris Rock will be doing his fifth HBO concert on September 27, 2008.

So there you go. Not a bad slate of stuff to keep you looking forward to for the next several months…and that’s not even counting the shows that earned their own panels.

First up: Ricky Gervais.

Though many Americans remain unaware of this fact, Gervais has stretched his career beyond television and film into the world of stand-up comedy. (His possession of the ability to do hilarious stand-up will come as no surprise to anyone who’s become addicted to the podcasts he’s done with his longtime writing partner, Stephen Merchant, and their associate, the inexplicable Mr. Karl Pilkington.) There are actually three DVDs worth of Gervais’ stand-up available in the UK – “Animals,” “Politics,” and “Fame” – but, to date, his Stateside fans have been given little opportunity outside of YouTube to investigate his facet of his work. Thankfully, HBO stands ready to change this by filming his performance next week at the Wamu Theater at Madison Square Garden, for air in the very near future. (The venue, according to Gervais was chosen because “I’ve just bought an apartment right near it, so I can walk.”)

Despite being one of the most distinctively British comedians working today, Gervais assured us that he won’t really have to change a great deal in his act for American audiences. “I obviously take out cultural references you wouldn’t get,” he admitted, “but I think it’s as simple as changing sort of stones for pounds. There’s nothing that I think an American audience wouldn’t like. It’s purely cultural references that might not be mutual. The things I pick on are probably global…and, you know, America, by its definition in the world, is pretty global, anyway. It’s a huge part of the world. Particularly the English-speaking world. I pick on the comedy classics. You know, Hitler, famine…

“What I do is, I have a bag of observations that I think might be funny, and I jot them down. I probably start with about half an hour, and that becomes an hour, and the other half an hour is sort of ad-libs and additions over the course of a
tour. The audience chooses the best bits for you. It’s a process of natural selection. So over a hundred dates, they’ve chosen your best hour. You thought it up and you said it, but they’ve sort of done the difficult bit for you.”

Gervais adopts a persona for his stand-up, “a brash, ignorant, and firm right-winged bigot,” which he views as a necessity. “I think you have to be slightly larger than life,” he explained. “One of my tours was called ‘Politics,’ where I thought it would be funny to pretend to be one of those comedians who is trying to change the world. So I like to have a slight bit of character slapped onto it just to back it up so it’s not just lines. I don’t really do gags. It’s quite anecdotal and flights of fancy, yes, certainly. Obviously, I don’t believe what I say, but I do it for comedy effect.”

In addition to his stand-up, Gervais is tempted to do a bit more “Extras,” though nothing’s written in stone yet. “I’m going to blame it on Steve Merchant,” he said. “I’m trying to persuade him to do another special. We do like the way we ended it on the special, and I don’t want to come back for a less-wanted encore, but unlike the English ‘Office,’ which we definitely killed dead, it’s a never-say-never with ‘Extras.’ I think we definitely would do another series.”

As long as we’re talking about brilliant British comedians, we might as well segue directly into talking about how the “Little Britain” guys, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, are bringing their skewed sense of humor to HBO for a new series, where they take on America with a combination of new characters and familiar favorites. (Don’t worry, Tom Baker’s narration is coming along with them.) Their sensibilities, however, have not changed dramatically for the American audience, if only because – not unlike Gervais – they don’t view the differences between the two countries as being that significant.

Matt Lucas: I think, wherever you are in the world, unfunny is unfunny. We talked about American comedy being cooler and in Britain being a bit sadder.
David Walliams: I think we make ourselves maybe stupid in Britain a little bit more rather than being cool, but also we’re not afraid to dress as women as well, which is a little bit rarer in American comedy.

The decision to do a “Little Britain” series in the States wasn’t something they’d been actively looking for; in fact, coming to America hadn’t even occurred to them, really. “It was actually (suggested by) Simon Fuller, the media mogul, who is responsible for the Spice Girls and that sort of thing,” revealed Walliams. “He came to us and said, ‘What’s happening in America?’ And we said, ‘Nothing, really.’ He said, ‘Let’s go and meet HBO,’ and we thought HBO would maybe buy the format and do their own show with an American cast, but, actually, they said to us, ‘We want you to do the show.’ And it wasn’t something we were really thinking about, but, obviously, it was the most amazing opportunity, so we seized it.”

As noted a moment ago, we’ll be seeing a blend of familiar characters and new creations. “The less funny ones we decided should stay in England,” Williams explained. “So we took the most sort of the popular ones and ones we thought would work. We didn’t want just to transpose all the British characters with no reason. Like, the character Vickie Pollard is very popular in Britain. She’s a teenage delinquent Matt plays, and she’s now at a boot camp in Utah, which felt just exactly right and is something we would probably do in England if there were boot camps in England. But I think the exciting thing for us was also creating lots of new American characters. Those gym buddies that you saw were really fun. It’s something I don’t think we would do in England, because that seems like a very American thing.”

There will be a interesting blend of guest stars, including an unexpectedly successful turn by Rosie O’Donnell. We saw the sketch in which she appears, where she sits in on a Fat Fighters meeting that features several jabs at her weight and closes with a shot at her sexuality that caused the entire audience of critics to howl with laughter. “We met Rosie, and she told us that when she was in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ she had given ‘Little Britain’ DVDs to all of her colleagues,” Lucas revealed. “And we met Sting, bizarrely, on a plane, and we ended up doing a sketch with him.”

Walliams threw a few more names into the mix. “Paul Rudd we sort of knew socially, and he plays the French President in the series,” he said. “Also, Robert Vaughn, ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ and ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ he makes an appearance as well. He came to our live show in England and said he liked the show and wanted to be in it.”

So now that Lucas and Walliams have gotten a taste of our fine country, will they be sticking around for the long haul?

Matt Lucas: We’re bi. (Laughs) I don’t know, we seem to be about half the year in the States and half the year in Britain, which kind of suits us, really.
David Walliams: This show will show on the BBC in England as well. But I mean, we’re obviously hoping if we get picked up for a second season — please! — then we’ll be spending more time here. And, obviously, it was really great to spend as much time to kind of get inspiration for characters and stuff like that, because we wanted to do some American characters in the show. We wanted to refresh it, even just for ourselves, creatively. So, yeah, hopefully we’ll be spending a little more time.

Before we make the jump from funny to serious, let’s perform a bit of a palate-cleansing and briefly discuss one of HBO’s new documentaries, “Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at The White House.” Although you’d sometimes be hard pressed to tell from my writing style, I do actually have a degree in journalism, and I can still remember one of my professors speaking of Ms. Thomas and saying, “Look for her, she’s at every press conference, and she always makes herself known.” Boy, that’s the truth.

Rory Kennedy, who spearheaded this film, gave a very succinct response when asked if she thought Thomas had ever been intimidated by anyone: “No.”

Fortunately, she elaborated a bit on that answer.

“You know, she admired Presidents, and I think she has great respect for the office of the Presidency, but I think that she really feels like these are human beings, and, ultimately, they’re not unlike you or me, in that they deserve to be questioned,” said Kennedy. “Her job is to question them, and she is going to question them every step of the way, no matter what. I think it’s that singular purpose that really defines Helen Thomas in a different light than most other White House Press Corps reporters or people in that position. The film addresses this kind of fine balance where the White House Press Corps has very intimate relationships with the President. That’s a part of who they are and what they represent. They’re invited to parties, and there can be a blurring of the lines of personal relationships versus being an objective journalist; Helen, over the years, has really made it a point to stand on the journalist part of that line and never cross over. Even when she’s at a party and it’s incredibly awkward – it might be a birthday party with 20 people there – she will start asking questions of the President. So, no, I don’t think that she is intimidated by anyone.”

I was sad to hear that Thomas is seriously ill and, as such, was unable to attend the panel, but given that she’s covered The White House for 60 years (!), it’s fair to say that “Thank You, Mr. President” will provide a fascinating look at one of political journalism’s most familiar faces and the events that she’s witnessed throughout her lengthy career.

From a true story to an inspired-by-a-true-story, we have “Generation Kill,” based on Evan Wright’s remarkable
book, “Generation Kill,” about the first 40 days of the Iraq war. The fact that it’s executive-produced by David Simon and Ed Burns, late of “The Wire,” is enough to sell your average HBO viewer on the miniseries from the get-go, but given its attempts to provide a look at the war from a perspective that’s more factual than overtly political, it’s very possible that both Democrats and Republicans might be able to get behind it.

Colin Callender, HBO’s president of films and miniseries, acknowledged that, from the network’s standpoint, it stood out that the book was not a political diatribe and didn’t bring a political point of view to the table. “What the book was really trying to do is honor the men (Wright) actually was embedded with,” said Callender, “and it was really a book about their firsthand experiences and put us with them. That’s really what appealed to us, and the timing of it was really a function of our ability to get the right people to get it together, to get the right writer and David can put together the right cast and production plan together.”

In other words, stop looking for some great conspiracy about why it took a few years to make it from print to HBO.

Several actual soldiers were on the set as “Generation Kill” was being made, and it was an odd sensation for actor Alexander Skarsgard. “I remember we were sitting in our Humvee, talking, and there was this little girl without legs and people lying dead all over the place, and…it was an intense experience for us,” said Skarsgard. “And then we realized, shit, two Humvees back is Rudy (Reyes), and he saw this live five years ago, and he’s been dealing with this ever since, and now he’s on a movie set and has to see it (again).”

Still, it’s clear that, despite their close proximity to the source material, those who’ve actually served in the military will certainly appreciate the miniseries…often on a level beyond the average viewer, as proven by a screening the previous night at Camp Pendleton. “They laughed at parts that regular people don’t laugh at,” said Simon, “and it got quiet at the combat sequences.”

“Yeah,” agreed Wright, “that audience totally got exactly what David and Ed and I were all doing on this project. They laughed at all the right jokes and they understood the gravity of scenes. And it was — for me personally, having started down this road a few years ago — the most gratifying moment of the whole production to see these guys laughing and nodding their heads with recognition, especially as controversial as the work was in some quarters.”

Simon was clearly tickled when someone asked him about his tendency to jump headlong into the fray with his productions, as it were, with no real explanation or clarification about what’s being seen on the screen, thereby leaving the viewer in a position where they kinda have to figure it out for themselves as they go along.

“When I started writing longer pieces or narrative pieces as a journalist, I started to think that instant exposition, which you’re always forced to do as a newspaperman by the copy desk…God bless them, they save you other times, but it’s
sort of soul- and story-killing in a way, because you’re never allowed to go on a journey with the characters or with the world,” explained Simon. “I actually give viewers and readers a great deal of credit that, if they want to enter a world, they will be willing to tolerate a certain amount of confusion as long as some core values and some core elements of the story are propelled forward. They will acquire the vernacular. The trick is to have you know what you need to know to
be able to progress the story.

“What’s the benefit to doing this? Well, A, people believe that they’re actually there because, in real life, they don’t stop to explain everything to you at the moment you need to acquire that information. We all negotiate the world without complete information at every instant. But, B, I actually think it’s a deeper and more resonant journey for viewers. Instead of leaning back and absorbing television leaning back on the sofa, maybe there’s a little bit pressed forward and leaning in, trying to catch more nuance in this world. It’s a different way of watching television. There is a reason to do it this way: it becomes a travel log. You’re now entering the world of the recon Marines. You’re now entering the world of the homicide unit. You’re really entering it.”

You heard the man: enter it. “Generation Kill” premieres tonight.

The last panel for the day was “True Blood,” based on the popular Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris and adapted by HBO superstar Alan Ball, the man responsible for “Six Feet Under.”

As described by HBO’s Sue Naegle, the 12-part series “combines mystery, suspense, romance, and humor as it centers on an unusual waitress with telepathic powers and an inexplicable attraction to a 173-year-old vampire who wanders into her bar one night.” Well, I don’t know how inexplicable it is. When you see Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill, the 173-year-old vampire in question, there’s not really going to be any question as to why the psychic Sookie Stackhouse is attracted to him…and as to why the feeling’s mutual, that won’t be any shock, either, since Sookie is played by the beautiful Anna Paquin. (I can testify that she’s just as gorgeous in person – distractingly so, even – as she is on screen.

Kudos to Ball, then, for deciding to embrace the sensuality of vampirism within the series. “It felt like it was a part of the world,” he explained. “Having read all of the books, as I did, it really felt like that was just a part of the whole world that the Sookie Stackhouse novels take place in. Also, one of my main characters is totally sexually compulsive, so it sort of feels like you have to go there.”

Ball might’ve read all the books now, but it was funny to hear that the only reason he discovered them in the first place was that he was killing time in a Barnes & Noble, waiting to head over to a dentist appointment. “I saw a book, the first book in the series, ‘Dead Until Dark,’ and the tagline was ‘Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend wasn’t such a good idea.’ And I thought it was really funny. I bought the book. I started reading it, and I couldn’t put it down. It’s the kind of book that you think, ‘I’m going to read one chapter before I go to bed,’ and you read seven. And about midway through the second book, I thought, ‘I think this might make a good television show,’ because you just want more. You just want more of this world and these characters. And then I got in touch with Charlaine, and at the time, there was an option on the books for a movie, but when it was time for that option to run out, I had another conversation with her, and she decided to go in this direction.”

The one noticeable difference between the books and the series was one came about simply due to logistics. “The books are basically Sookie’s story; Sookie basically narrates everything, and all the other characters exist only when they’re in the same room with her. And I felt like that would be a production impossibility, because then Anna would be working 12 hours a day, five days a week. And all the other characters were really interesting, and I wanted to just flesh that out a little.”

It’s clear that Ball is aware of the fanaticism of Harris’s fans. He reiterated repeatedly that he really does want to stay true to Harris’s vision, adding that she’s seen the first two episodes and has come down to visit the set while they were shooting. “I think it’s really important to include her,” he clarified, “because in a way…well, not in a way. In every way, none of us would be here if it weren’t for her. And I really, really want her fans to be fans of the show, and I really want the show to sell a lot more books for her.

“But,” he added, “at a certain point, you have to make a separation and make the show that you believe is the best
show and hope for the best. Briefly, I was reading the boards on her website before we were casting, and a lot of people were suggesting professional wrestlers to play Eric because they were blond and nordic and they looked right. I sort of stopped reading at that point.”

For her part, Paquin is clearly quite pleased with playing the part of Sookie. “I think she’s so many things in one person,” she said. “She’s tough and she’s courageous and she’s smart, but she’s sweet and she’s innocent and she’s naive and she’s quite sheltered. And she is completely open-minded, which, in her very small town, is a little bit less common. There’s just something about that level of enthusiasm that she has for things that are new and things that are exciting as opposed to being frightened that I think is really appealing. You see that with the relationship with her grandmother that it’s…it’s fascinating. And even though she kind of gets into trouble quite frequently in the show, she’s still a very tough little girl.”

As for what we can expect from the relationship between Sookie and Bill, Paquin hesitated a bit in her answer. “Well, obviously, there’s an immediate fascination and attraction between Bill and Sookie,” she said, “if for no other reason than anyone else is terrified of him and she’s just dying to go up and take his drink order. And we do get to see the roller coaster of that relationship because, obviously, as, I guess, the title of the book would suggest, having a vampire as a boyfriend isn’t always the simplest of things to choose. So I don’t know how to say much more about it without giving away the plot…and my boss is sitting right there!”

Fair enough. Guess we’ll just have to wait until September 7th, when “True Blood” premieres.