Bad behaviour
The new Ricky Gervais vehicle does it for comic effect, but who knows why the couples on Temptation Island signed up for immorality? Steve Kilgallon reports.
Maybe it’s because turning 40 has moved me right into that demographic of angry, white, middle-aged men who actually have no justifiable reason to feel angry, but watching Ricky Gervais’ new drama After Life (Netflix, streaming now) left me in a bitter, misanthropic funk for the rest of the day.
Gervais, of course, has cast himself in the lead as jaded local hack Tony, whose only way to manage life through grief after the death of his wife, Lisa, is to behave like a complete arse to everyone he meets.
Tony’s philosophy, as explained to his boss (and brother-in-law) is thus: ‘‘There’s no advantage to going around being nice to people and caring and having integrity.’’
It gives Gervais licence (if he’d ever needed it, given his background of calling people ‘‘mongs’’) to use the vehicle of Tony to say and do whatever he likes. Which is actually consistently quite funny.
Approached by two local hoodlums demanding cash, he instead delivers a speech about his deathwish and cracks one in the face with a can of dog food. A child in a playground shouts ‘‘paedo’’. Tony retorts: ‘‘I’m not a paedo, and if I was, you’d be safe, you tubby, ginger c .... ’’
The key markers of a Gervais comedy are there: Ricky himself starring; a wholly insensitive offsider for him to hurl abuse at (this time, a portly photographer); constant jokes about fat people; and a cast of stars in cameo roles, including Penelope Wilton, Ashley Jensen and David Bradley as his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father.
There’s a jarring disconnect between Tony’s relentless rudeness and his redeeming features, shoehorned in by Gervais so you’ll like the guy. I’m three episodes in, but the inevitable epiphany is looming larger and larger and it’s hard to see how it’s going to be convincing.
But After Life made me laugh at least four times an episode, and I felt that here was a genuine, rather brave and quite decent attempt to portray true, hopeless grief on screen.
It offers some bleak moments: Tony’s various suicide attempts and, the end of the second episode, where he lies senseless on his sofa after experimenting with heroin, as the newspaper’s smack-addled delivery man rifles through his wallet. You can see why it left me feeling flat.
For some light relief then, let us turn to TVNZ’s Temptation Island (TVNZ On Demand, streaming now). I wasn’t versed enough in the reality TV sub-genre of atoll-based action to distinguish this from Love Island and Heartbreak Island. But how it differs from its rivals is by possessing even less morality than what has gone before. This time, the entire premise is to prod people into cheating on their partners.
Four long-term couples have inexplicably agreed to go to a luxury resort island, be split up, and then wooed by various singles to see if they will stray. One of the women describes it as a ‘‘necessary pain’’.
It’s American, it’s schmaltzy, it’s naff, but its also unforgivably slow moving: you’re basically here to see someone break someone else’s heart, and I’m here to tell you that in the first 35 minutes of episode one, that doesn’t happen. It’s depressing television.
And finally. Beyond the freedom of this column, my viewing is rarely dictated by my own free will. Given a choice, I would never ever watch the online phenomena that is Blippi, a deranged clown who posts YouTube videos that enthral the under-3 set.
However, due to co-habiting with a surfeit of that target audience, I’ve seen plenty, enough to deeply despise Blippi (real name, Stevin John).
Blippi’s schtick is to charge into indoor playbarns and run wildly around while squeaking: ‘‘This is fun!’’ His output is loosely marketed as educational, because every so often Blippi will make an animal noise or point out what his favourite colour is.
It isn’t of course, it’s cynical, lazy and designed to flog merchandise. I’d love Tony to meet Blippi, and have a frank conversation about the futility of existence.