Watch Ricky Gervais Half-Arse His Way Through Ads For Netflix

It's here at last — as of today, Netflix has launched in Australia.

The nation's third video streaming-on-demand service has been eagerly awaited since the first rumbles it'd be heading Down Under back in 2013, leading to a confirmation of its launch date late last year and, now, the big unveiling.

To help commemorate the occasion, Netflix, in collaboration with Optus in honour of the companies' new partnership, has unveiled a series of advertisements to help plug the new product, starring one-time Netflix UK ambassador Ricky Gervais. 

However, the infamous mastermind behind The Office appears to have had a few caveats to his participation — namely, to be able to avoid having to put in any effort. Hey, it's great work if you can get it, and get it Gervais did, managing to be both professionally informative - letting us know, for example, that Netflix is offering six free months for new and returning Optus customers, and that we're well serviced for original series such as Orange Is The New Black and House Of Cards - and his usual entertaining self.

Check out the ads below, in which he spends Optus' time and money talking about how he's being paid to waste Optus' time and money. It's actually pretty nice they rolled with this idea, even going so far as to leave in Gervais' comment that he has no idea who or what Optus is or does.

To be honest, though, we're not entirely sure that this next one sells anything at all. Pretty sneaky.

Australia's SVOD landscape now moves into its most comprehensive chapter, with Netflix, the Channel Nine & Fairfax-owned Stan, and the Channel Seven and Foxtel-owned Presto, now vying for Aussie dollars in a bidding war that is likely to reach into the tens of millions of dollars.

However, Stan chief executive Mike Sneesby doesn't believe the new playing field will be a destructively competitive environment, telling Mumbrella, "I genuinely don't see this as a marketing war. I see that the biggest challenge we have ahead of us, we as a streaming industry, is to get the message out there to consumers and to grow the take-up in the market."

"Our research tells us we have 1.5 million households today as a minimum who are the pent-up demand group for streaming services. This is really about how quickly we can grow the market to those 1.5 million households."

"This is not a winner-takes-all market," Sneesby continued. "This is a market where people will hop around, do trials, choose their favourite etc. There is a consensus in the media that the SVOD services will align with independent and individual ISPs; I think you will see a much more open market than that."

If you want to check out any of your SVOD options now that we have three to choose from, head to the services' respective websites: Stan // Presto // Netflix.