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Ricky Gervais - After Life [split topic]

Started by ramsobot, February 22, 2019, 05:39:11 PM

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olliebean

"From the mind of Ricky Gervais"

Just in case anyone thought it was from his arse.

kalowski

Quote from: ramsobot on February 22, 2019, 05:39:11 PM
Here's the trailer.
Best comment
QuoteDerek was the best thing he ever made. I really hope this is up that alley.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

I don't think I can bear to sit through six episodes of Gervais wandering around looking miserable and swearing at people.

Cuellar

Yeah if he's not playing a mong I'm not interested

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

He really is such a terrible, boring actor. Great as Brent, yes, but that's a role he was born to play (i.e. a slightly exaggerated version of himself), but whenever he has to play an ordinary person like Andy Millman or whatever this bloke is called, he exhibits no charm or charisma whatsoever. He's a vacuum.

I'm not including Derek as an example of him acting, as there are no words to describe what he was doing in that show.

Cuellar

Absolutely. It's just his stand-up/chat show/'sitting down with comedy heroes' persona - he looks completely at sea.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Cuellar on February 22, 2019, 09:29:39 PM
Absolutely. It's just his stand-up/chat show/'sitting down with comedy heroes' persona - he looks completely at sea.

Ricky Gervais isn't a very interesting or charismatic person, hence why his attempts to play realistic versions of himself always fall flat.

Peter Sellers famously said that he could never play an ordinary person on screen because he didn't have much of a real-life personality to tap into. Gervais is like that, but without the saving grace of being able to play loads of other characters brilliantly.

 

Cuellar


up_the_hampipe

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on February 22, 2019, 09:50:04 PM
Ricky Gervais isn't a very interesting or charismatic person, hence why his attempts to play realistic versions of himself always fall flat.

Peter Sellers famously said that he could never play an ordinary person on screen because he didn't have much of a real-life personality to tap into. Gervais is like that, but without the saving grace of being able to play loads of other characters brilliantly.

I don't think that's true at all. Certainly looks shite in this, but to say he has no personality or charisma is absurd. Outside of The Office, his only notable strength has been his ability to be naturally funny in radio/chat show/podcast settings. He just can't figure out how to translate that to an acting role, and those are very different things.

BritishHobo

I like that his character in this is THE SADDEST PERSON EVER, like how Derek is the kindest. A nurse in a care home with dementia patients says she has never seen anyone as sad as him.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: BritishHobo on February 22, 2019, 10:24:25 PM
I like that his character in this is THE SADDEST PERSON EVER, like how Derek is the kindest. A nurse in a care home with dementia patients says she has never seen anyone as sad as him.

Poor Kerry Godliman once again reduced to telling the audience that Gervais' character is a goodhearted, decent person. He's learned nothing, has he? Good, this might actually be worth watching in that case.

BritishHobo

Looks like David Earl is playing Brian Gittins though so fuck you all, I'm watching every episode.

Enzo

Thought I saw Tony Way in the newspaper office as well

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on February 22, 2019, 10:06:33 PM
I don't think that's true at all. Certainly looks shite in this, but to say he has no personality or charisma is absurd. Outside of The Office, his only notable strength has been his ability to be naturally funny in radio/chat show/podcast settings. He just can't figure out how to translate that to an acting role, and those are very different things.

Okay, fair enough. I think he is/was a naturally funny person, but over the last 15 years or so he's become an increasingly self-conscious, insecure, desperate and didactic bore who constantly feels the need to justify and explain his terrible work. If he hasn't worked out how to translate his radio/podcast comedy into a decent starring vehicle by now, then he never will.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: BritishHobo on February 22, 2019, 10:32:43 PM
Looks like David Earl is playing Brian Gittins though so fuck you all, I'm watching every episode.

Earl will probably get a few laughs in this, I'm fairly certain of that.

Gervais should stop trying to write profound, sensitive works of art and focus on what he's good at: daft, crude, verbal comedy which allows the likes of Earl to just fuck about and be funny.

mrjava

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on February 22, 2019, 10:42:58 PM
Okay, fair enough. I think he is/was a naturally funny person, but over the last 15 years or so he's become an increasingly self-conscious, insecure, desperate and didactic bore who constantly feels the need to justify and explain his terrible work. If he hasn't worked out how to translate his radio/podcast comedy into a decent starring vehicle by now, then he never will.

Wow. Read a few of your comments in this thread and you really hate Gervais.

Sure, Derek, all his films and most of his stand-ups are terrible. But The Office is clearly amazing and Extras is even better.

Come on, admit it. Extras is the greatest sitcom of all time.


Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: Enzo on February 22, 2019, 10:42:31 PM
Thought I saw Tony Way in the newspaper office as well

Also, a bewigged Paul Kaye as the therapist and Ashley Jensen playing a nurse. David Bradley as That Bloke's dad too.

Say what you like about our Rickster, he always manages to gather a decent group of supporting actors around him.


Bronzy


Quote from: mrjava on February 22, 2019, 10:53:14 PM
Come on, admit it. Extras is the greatest sitcom of all time.

i likd the bit with the condom on Diana Riggs head

comedy mastermind

McFlymo

Quote from: QDRPHNC on February 18, 2019, 12:15:03 AM
I think what we all don't understand, yeah, is that sometimes it looks like people are doing something really bad, like heroin, yeah? But they're only doing heroin because something bad has happened to them, yeah?

This made me lol.

I hate Gervais, but I did like the Office and I loved Extras. Probably accidentally, it was like they were predicting the rise of celebrities being more known for being, like, actually, sort of just normal people, kinda, on Twitter and that... Innit? But it felt quite original and clever at the time, at least to me.

But aye, he's a massive embarrassing tosser. I couldn't watch LTS or Derek, although I had a good hatewatch of Humanity recently.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: McFlymo on February 23, 2019, 12:32:45 AM
This made me lol.

I hate Gervais, but I did like the Office and I loved Extras. Probably accidentally, it was like they were predicting the rise of celebrities being more known for being, like, actually, sort of just normal people, kinda, on Twitter and that... Innit? But it felt quite original and clever at the time, at least to me.

But aye, he's a massive embarrassing tosser. I couldn't watch LTS or Derek, although I had a good hatewatch of Humanity recently.

It wasn't original or clever, the evil rise of Big Brother and reality television in general had already been critiqued to fuck, at that time, by the likes of Brooker and countless other journalists and satirists. Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy predicted this plague back in 1983, but "people becoming celebrities for the sake of being a celebrity" has been a despairingly satirical trope since the dawn of mass entertainment.

bradaaron87

Quote from: mrjava on February 22, 2019, 10:53:14 PMCome on, admit it. Extras is the greatest sitcom of all time.



Course it is — and H from Steps doing a cover of 'Agadoo' on Fentanyl is better than Sinatra.

ToneLa


St_Eddie

Quote from: mrjava on February 22, 2019, 10:53:14 PM
Come on, admit it. Extras is the greatest sitcom of all time.

I don't think that it's the greatest sitcom of all time (Fawlty Towers lays claim to that title) but I genuinely place Extras in my top 5 sitcoms of all time (whereas The Office wouldn't make that list - although it would make an appearance somewhere in the top 10).  You can laugh all you want but I'm not going to apologise for liking what I like.

Pseudopath

Fucking hell. I think Gervais has actually outdone Peter Kay with the amount of dogshit he's managed to squeeze out of the same handful of paltry ideas. Not content with padding out his live stage shows with pub jokes from the 80's, he's now reworking them into stilted dialogue.

Sad that he's managed to drag Diane Morgan into his career-killing troupe. Given that she's basically been dressed up as the "sexy secretary" trope, I've got a horrible feeling her character is being set up as his love interest (although obviously not until the final episode so that Gervais can max out on his patented brand of oh-so-edgy misanthropy).

Small Man Big Horse

I watched his 1999 pilot Golden Years - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uQ019iAcQM - a couple of weeks ago and it's pretty hateful stuff. It's based around a manager of an office who wants to be famous (so yeah, it's very Brent-ish) but it lacks all of the warmth of The Office and doesn't have a Tim/Dawn element in it and so it's nearly all Gervais all the time making sexist jokes, and there's nothing but cringe comedy throughout. It was co-written by Stephen Merchant as well so he has to take the blame for some of the pretty abhorrent content too.