Ricky Gervais - After Life [split topic]

[Ferris]

Are we doing bets on how many Coldplay songs will be in this?

[Bennett Brauer]

Bill Burr's podcast last week included an excerpt from an old 2011 podcast of his in which he talks about three TV shows in development that he wasn't interested in because he thought the concepts were crap. One was about a guy who was compelled to tell the truth after he'd had a brain aneurysm, eg telling a woman she had a fat arse. So an idea that Bill Burr wasn't interested in auditioning for eight years ago.

[Cuellar]

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.

He should remake this but playing a guy who tries to make it as a David Brent impersonator.

[bradaaron87]

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.

Fuck me, that's depressing. Not in a downbeat, artsy kinda way either. The sex-miming bit with the agent made my skin crawl.

I will go into After Life with an open mind, though.

[BritishHobo]

Also it's basically The Invention of Lying again, right? The idea that true honesty means brutal honesty where you tell all fat ugly people that they're fat and ugly.

I will remind everyone again as a side note, to balance my ragging on Gervais, that I once gave The Invention of Lying a five-star review so sycophantic that everyone else on Pilkipedia went 'for fuck's sake, mate'.

[bradaaron87]

Also it's basically The Invention of Lying again, right?

[DrGreggles]

I've never liked Gervais, but this must be pretty tough on those who once thought he was good.

[Jake Thingray]

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

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,11473.0.html

[Bronzy]

I love this rant about Gervais by a guy on Pilkipedia after the Rickster tweeted about him in an attempt to get his followers to abuse him:

He's a cunt. A proper cunt. Not in a "haha, silly cunt" sort of way, but a nasty little cunt. He's also a bully, which really adds to him being a cunt. His followers, or at least, the ones who follow his every word as though it's gospel are cunts. There is no bigger waste of oxygen than them, seeing as how they claim to have free minds due to their atheism, but they really don't. They spout his bullshit as though they came up with it themselves, just like he spouts his bullshit as though he came up with himself. As DLGE said, he hasn't had an original idea since 1998. I'm happy to say The Office was most likely 95% Steve, as was Extras. LTS was probably the first thing Ricky properly worked on, and we saw how that turned out. Derek was funny when he was mocking people with learning disabilities, because it was cringe comedy, where we could say "ooh, should we be laughing at that?" and he's whored that short out for the wider audience by praying on the retards that think Xfactor is good television, the people who cry when a character dies in eastenders. He parades his "kindness is magic" bullshit around whilst setting loose his followers on people who have the good mind to realise his work is shit. He does it to people who don't even tell him directly. He looks for criticism, and whilst true artists, artists with integrity embrace criticism and use it to better their work, he makes snide remarks about his critics, professional or otherwise, calling them "haters" like he's a twelve year old little wank-stain on xbox live. He's beaten down a nice, simple man who he met at a radio station and claims it's all fine because that man has made money off of the beatings. He's alienated himself from people who used to respect him and has embraced those who he would consider to be the lowest common denominator ten years ago, probably the same people who didn't realise the office was a mock documentary. He tells people that we're losers because we post on a forum. He spends every day with his phone out on twitter, attacking people who disagree with him and retweeting people he's probably paid to praise him. He's 52 years old and he spends all of his time talking about his success, his fortune and his shit sell-out version of a 12 year old character.

Still love Steve and Karl though.

Edit: Also, fuck you Ricky. Stop sending followers after people, stop being a cunt to people who follow a religion, and start trying to write something half decent. Fucks sake.

[Spoon of Ploff]

I laughed at the bit in the trailer where Ricky Gervais swears at the kid who called him a paedo. But I laughed loads more In Peep Show when a lead pipe waving David Mitchell chased screaming after the kid who called him a paedo.

[Ferris]

I laughed at the bit in the trailer where Ricky Gervais swears at the kid who called him a paedo. But I laughed loads more In Peep Show when a lead pipe waving David Mitchell chased screaming after the kid who called him a paedo.

...in 2003

[olliebean]

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).

I think they're friends, as she seems to be on his Sirius radio thing a lot. Although I listened to one of them on Youtube on the basis of her being in it and she didn't seem to say much - there were long stretches where if you hadn't seen her in the thumbnail you'd not have known she was there at all.

[Bennett Brauer]

Slight digression, Stephen Merchant is doing publicity for his new wrestling film.

Directing without Gervais is harder - he misses having a partner to thrash everything out with...
Will they work together again? "Possibly. I see no reason not to. If the right thing came along that was perfect for the two of us it would be fun to do it again. It just needs to be the right project. You can stagnate... I think it's quite good to take time apart, as it were."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-stephen-merchant-created-the-feel-good-comedy-of-the-year-9qsr7jrr9

On the face of it, no rift there, but does Gervais say similar things about Merchant?

[McFlymo]

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.

That's not what I was saying, but. The way it featured cameos from celebs, playing exaggerated versions of themselves, but didn't centre everything around that, was quite clever, I thought. I liked that it had a few different moving parts. Please don't get me wrong, Gervais is a pure bell mate... But aye, Extras was good and I will say, clever. Yep.

[BeardFaceMan]

The way it featured cameos from celebs, playing exaggerated versions of themselves, but didn't centre everything around that, copied The Larry Sanders Show which not many people in the UK had seen was quite clever, I thought.

[St_Eddie]

Extras was good and I will say, clever. Yep.

I second that motion.

[Cuellar]

Morecambe and Wise with more swearing and less wit

[phes]

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

All just accurate descriptions 

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.

You're living in the past man, you're hung up on some...

Seriously though, I actually rate Derek as his best contribution to comedy. The problem with Derek is that it was the culmination of a fifteen year, multi-media, Ricky Gervais reality car-crash and you had to watch it unfolding to appreciate the horrors behind the open wound. It's why it's difficult, nigh on impossible to explain to someone just how bad Derek was. Why the re-watch here didn't really take off, let alone reach the heights of what I reckon is fair to call the legendary original watch-along thread.

I watched the After Life trailer. It fucking stinks

[bradaaron87]

His twitter account during Derek was a car crash of hypocrisy.


"Kindness is Magic"

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

That's not what I was saying, but. The way it featured cameos from celebs, playing exaggerated versions of themselves, but didn't centre everything around that, was quite clever, I thought. I liked that it had a few different moving parts. Please don't get me wrong, Gervais is a pure bell mate... But aye, Extras was good and I will say, clever. Yep.

As BeardFaceMan says, The Larry Sanders Show had already done that. Gervais and Merchant are huge fans of The Larry Sanders Show.

[Bronzy]

Ricky Gervais attempting to interview Garry Shandling was amazing, Shandling fucked around with him and played him at his own game, and basically showed Gervais up for the massive hypocrite he is.

Lovely stuff.

[Jumblegraws]

"He's hanging out with a sex worker and a drug addict because he doesn't care about himself anymore"

HAHAHAHA. Imagine. IMAGINE hanging around with a SEX WORKER and a DRUG ADDICT, literally the worst people in the world. You'd have to have zero self respect to consort with those types. Drug addict indeed.

Sounds promising! But yeah, probably will just be v. v. boring, as indeed Derek was once the initial lunacy wore off. A second watch through just didn't work, too dull.

That reminds me of when he pitched Derek as about people who've "got nothing, but they've got each other", as if working/volunteering in a care home is like being in a modern day leper colony.

I really hope he inspires a thousand scathing opinion pieces with this dodgy portrayal of suicide ideation, the fucking creep,

[idunnosomename]

dunno who this is but this popped up on my twitter and oh my

https://twitter.com/eliistender10/status/1099729280962039809

[Crabwalk]

I was very happy to approach this project with an open mind but, guys, this looks like a bigger budget Derek to me.

The same underlying sentimentalism (he's going to learn that 'kindness is magic' isn't he?). The same Kerry Godliman exposition that the protagonist is good despite acting otherwise. The same disdain for any form of outsider-dom. The same belief that saying taboo things is intrinsically humourous. Not giving a cast of comedians anything funny to say. Lashings of cringe. OK, that's his stock-in-trade, I know.

The only question mark is if it'll have Derek's batshit moments like Robot Grief Dog that kept us watching through the relentless gloop.

But I think we're in for a hatewatching treat. It looks like Gervais³ to me.

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

He's only down for 1 episode on imdb. All the other name actors are down for 6, including Roisin Conaty and Joe Wilkinson, who I didn't even spot in the trailer. There's certainly some incredible comedic firepower in the cast for him to very probably misuse spectacularly.

[phes]

That reminds me of when he pitched Derek as about people who've "got nothing, but they've got each other", as if working/volunteering in a care home is like being in a modern day leper colony.

I really hope he inspires a thousand scathing opinion pieces with this dodgy portrayal of suicide ideation, the fucking creep,

He's too big to fail. As a perusal of the 'reviews' of the After Life trailer demonstrates. And they will dwarf (lol) any actual critique of the product. Ricky Gervais is just a very sellable brand of dog turd that it is in almost nobodies interest to point out

[QDRPHNC]

He's too big to fail. As a perusal of the 'reviews' of the After Life trailer demonstrates. And they will dwarf (lol) any actual critique of the product. Ricky Gervais is just a very sellable brand of dog turd that it is in almost nobodies interest to point out

That's the rub with Gervais. There are a lot of people out there making bad TV I don't care about at all. With Gervais what's so aggravating is the disparity between the quality of his work and what he thinks the quality of his work is.

[Jumblegraws]

That's the rub with Gervais. There are a lot of people out there making bad TV I don't care about at all. With Gervais what's so aggravating is the disparity between the quality of his work and what he thinks the quality of his work is.

I could live with that happily. What made Derek worth talking about for me, besides the sheer weirdness of stuff like the yoga-granny perving and Robot Grief Dog, was that Gervais was getting away with pushing a retrograde trope (specifically that learning disabled people should be celebrated as ciphers that make non-disabled people feel better about life). It looks likely that After Life is belly-flopping into similar territory with regards to suicidality.

[Ferris]

That's the rub with Gervais. There are a lot of people out there making bad TV I don't care about at all. With Gervais what's so aggravating is the disparity between the quality of his work and what he thinks the quality of his work is.

Exactly this. Also - he'll gleefully do lowest common denominator "kids say the funniest things" shit to keep his profile up, which is hardly Lenny Bruce.

How does that fit in with artistic integrity? Does he reckon that Woody Allen would also do this kind of work, if that is his benchmark?

He's either deluded or a self-aggrandizing liar with 0 scruples. That's fine - lots of people in TV fit that bill, but they don't patronizingly bang on about their artform, or reckon they are making great works of fiction.

[Twed]

There will always be people who have a pathological need to defend the "winners" too. Bad politicians, bad celebrities, bad sports personalities... people feel powerful via them. So Gervais is going to be backed up by rabid fans for as long as he is a media figure.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Gervais is being interviewed on 5Live right now, the interviewer was talking about him using a particular swear word (which obviously they couldn't say on the radio at this time of day, or at all) and interviewer goes and refers to it as "that word that we cunt say".  LOL, nice one!