Gervais’s grief-com has the emotional depth of a Post-it
The third and final series of Ricky Gervais’s wildly popular grief-com After Life (Netflix) begins superbly. As ever, the episode starts with an old home video of Lisa (Kerry Godliman), who died of breast cancer before the first series began. In it, she is struggling to steer a rowing boat as husband Tony (Gervais) films her, the pair chuckling and joshing and essentially having a very lovely and loving time. The laptop snaps shut, but, for once, it is not a morose Tony watching the video, wondering how he can live without Lisa – it’s Emma (Ashley Jensen), Tony’s love interest, wondering how she can ever compare to Lisa. It is a gentle, subtle twist.
It is, by far, the high point in another trite, mawkish, soggy pudding of a series, that wallows in its own cynical slurry pit of emotion and thin-skinned misanthropy, Tony inhabiting a world in which, in his words, almost everyone is a “c--t”, except for him and his dog. It is a show that doesn’t just want to have its cake and it eat – Tony sneers at everyone, but he, and only he, can still see the essential good in them – it wants to have its cake, eat it, spit it out, rub it in your face and then tearfully demand you admire the baking.
The plot hasn’t really moved on (though three cast regulars – Roisin Conaty, Mandeep Dhillon and Paul Kaye – have, understandably), with Tony’s tentative relationship with angel-hearted care home nurse Emma struggling to go anywhere. Tony still works at the Tambury Gazette, interviewing local oddballs with open-mouthed incredulity. He still shovels red wine into his mouth while sitting on his sofa with his dog in a brave haze of self-pity. He still spends his days insulting his colleagues – Tony Way’s gentle photographer, Lenny, Tom Basden’s weedy boss, Matt, Diane Morgan’s brassy ad lady, Kath. He still ends every episode sat on a graveyard bench with Penelope Wilton’s magical widow, as she tells him how wonderful and kind and special he is. Old people in Tambury all tend to be twinkly and charming or refreshingly foulmouthed. Old people are magic, as Derek, Gervais’s previously worse creation, may have said.
The only innovation is Coleen (Kath Hughes), a sadsack new intern at the Gazette, whose existence in the show I struggled to discern after watching all six episodes. The will-they-won’t-they storyline between Tony and Emma flutters along, but it has done since the first series, and Tony treats her so objectionably that you long for her to meet someone else. Emma, of course, despite no evidence, thinks Tony is the greatest guy she has ever met. Most people think this in After Life.
Back in the first series – which, thanks to its decent premise and the excellent cast, was perfectly watchable – Tony, considering suicide, decided he had a “super power”. This was his ability not to care about anything or anyone (though he still kept turning up to work), which meant he could always tell people what he thought about them. And if it all got too much, he could kill himself. Gradually, our hero has realised that perhaps, maybe, it’s better to be nice to people, as well as calling them an ugly, fat slob. In series three we see Tony the suicidal misanthrope and Tony the saviour, like a one-man, village hall production of It’s a Wonderful Life.
This is not to say that After Life does not work on some levels. It’s designed as a feelgood tearjerker, and as it reaches its denouement the emotional beats are punched harder and harder (we get children with cancer in the finale) and the indie-song soundtrack gets sadder and sadder. The emotions here – grief, sorrow, jealousy, anger, love – are not insincere, but they have the depth of a Post-it note. Watching a whole series of After Life in quick succession is a bit like hearing a six-year-old describe a four-year-old’s drawing of a funeral. There is a simplistic strain of philosophy that runs through the whole thing, too, with Tony, as if he was Bhudda, telling people to “just be yourself ” and “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”.
And Gervais, as we well know, is funny and can write a gag. Sadly, the few genuine chuckles are drowned in a deluge of anvil-drop jokes about w---ing, fat people, poor genital hygiene, people who like Toploader, defecation, hipsters and w---ing. There is also a very odd subplot in which Tony/ricky shows off about how good at sport he is, which feels a little like someone proving they can throw a kettle over a pub.
Hardcore fans of the show – which are legion – will mourn its passing, but for the rest of us, Gervais’s maudlin curio remains a kind of purgatory.
After Life ★