Ricky Gervais - After Life [split topic]

[QDRPHNC]

Gosh. I'd almost forgotten how much everyone hates Ricky Gervais on here.
Almost.

Yeah, what's not to like about an emotionally stunted twitter bully who turns out unwatchablely bad television?

[Cuellar]

Gosh. I'd almost forgotten how much everyone hates Ricky Gervais on here.
Almost.

I don't even hate Ricky Gervais - this program is just awful.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Gosh. I'd almost forgotten how much everyone hates Ricky Gervais on here.
Almost.

Have you watched After Life?

[paruses]

Caved and have just started to watch. On to ep2 now. Its inconsistency bugs me but I can't be arsed to keep track - most of it's been said already.

Just got to the bit where he's arranged to go and chase some dragons with the man who is clearly not an habitual drug user. If his new philosophy is he can do and say what he wants then why did he ask the drug man to not tell anyone?

I'll probably keep the thousands of similar observations to myself as it's tiring but he's like Steven Segal and Kevin Costner making stuff just so he can play the hero.

[cliggg]

This is of course pure shite. He seems very obsessed with fat people, the relentless slagging of the guy he works with is just uncomfortable to watch. If anyone asks me to describe this I will tell them it's Ricky Gervais telling as many people as he possibly can that he wants to kill himself and him being described as lovely and smart by women for no apparent reason.

I did like Roisin Conaty's boobs though.

[thecuriousorange]

Honestly it's just inconceivable how many people are praising this as the best thing ever.

"People like 'After Life' and voted for the Brexit. You can't trust people."

[madhair60]

The atheism bit in episode 3 is so crowbarred in its downright shameful

[StewartLeehaslethimselfgo]

Is this not just a rip off of Karl's Sick of It?

I lasted 3 episodes and Bowie'd out (You know Ricky knew David Bowie?)

One minute its sickipedia level fat jokes and cunt cunt cunt, and the next its trying to be a heartwarming drama but his acting and clichéd speeches are so bad its the only (unintentional) comedy in it

It's not just paid reviews calling this a masterpiece I've seen actual humans I know on twitter saying its the best thing he's done and they cried all through it, mad this world innit?

[PlanktonSideburns]

Also, cunt missed the chance to call it After Wife, the fucking NUMBSKULL

[gib]

I reckon i'd be prepared to watch a clip.

[Noodle Lizard]

Finished this now.  I don't reckon it's quite as dire as folk are making out, nothing like on par with Derek.  That said, the homeless junkie conclusion and subsequent lack of reflection did approach Derek levels of bizarreness, and the crowbarred-in atheism rants were truly laughable, especially after he'd managed to avoid an opportunity in an earlier episode when the kid asks why Jesus didn't save his wife, which I thought was a deliberate subversion of people's expectations.  Nope, don't worry, he'll have Diane Morgan do a religious idiot strawman for him to DESTROY soon enough.

Yeah, staggeringly self-unaware and occasionally inane, but this is Gervais we're talking about.  It's better than anything he's done in about a decade, so we have that at least.

[tomasrojo]

Twitter flying monkeys:
https://twitter.com/DonaldClarke63/status/1106621877513080832

[paruses]

The thing I find really hard to accept is how amateurish and inexperienced the storytelling / plotting / characterisation is. He is like the Benjamin Button of writing/directing.

And this may be comparing apples to oranges (which is a perfectly valid thing to do) but I've just watched he first 3'17 of Ep6 of Flowers (Shun speaking to his family, spoilers redacted) and it had evoked more emotion that 6 whole episodes of After Life.

[rasta-spouse]

He is like the Benjamin Button of writing/directing.

I also find it hard to understand how The Office has the intelligence that it does. You watch anything Gervais did after it, or Merchant's Hello Ladies....it doesn't add up. So, I'm thinking, maybe Ash Atalla might have helped shape it.

[Ferris]

I also find it hard to understand how The Office has the intelligence that it does. You watch anything Gervais did after it, or Merchant's Hello Ladies....it doesn't add up. So, I'm thinking, maybe Ash Atalla might have helped shape it.

Keith was the brains behind the operation. The power behind the throne.



Bloody repeats...

[Cursus]

The reviewer for the Irish Times wasn't impressed by After Life:

Grief works upon us all in different ways; its various stages capable of smothering and distorting our personalities. In Tony's case it is more horrifying, transforming this local paper journalist utterly, and irredeemably, into Ricky Gervais.

Nothing irritates Gervais more than someone who is overweight (another stranger is "a fat c**t eating like a fucking slug"), or boring (like the criminally under-used, or perhaps safely contained, Diane Morgan), presumably because we most deplore in others what we dislike in ourselves.

Tony, of course, reserves particular scorn for actual children, here represented as either bullies or thugs, against which he bravely fights back several times. He does love animals, the show stresses, much like Gervais, Tony Soprano or Hitler.

[madhair60]

Er, Ricky just basically murdered a man.

[shiftwork2]

Er, Ricky just basically murdered a man.

He is lovely though.  The lady keeps saying!

[madhair60]

RICKY JUST GAVE A JUNKIE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY DRUGS TO OVERDOSE, ON PURPOSE, WITH THE INTENT THE JUNKIE USE THE MONEY TO BUY DRUGS IN ORDER TO OVERDOSE

[BritishHobo]

Goodnight, sweet drug man

[bgmnts]

Remember The Office?

[PlanktonSideburns]

RICKY JUST GAVE A JUNKIE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY DRUGS TO OVERDOSE, ON PURPOSE, WITH THE INTENT THE JUNKIE USE THE MONEY TO BUY DRUGS IN ORDER TO OVERDOSE

Love your Gervais comic even more to know you hadn't seen this yet

[Noodle Lizard]

Killing with kindness is a bit of a running theme in Gervais's recent work.  I'm pretty sure Derek gets drunk and kills his own dad.  It's a fan theory, but one with a good deal of supporting evidence.

The thing about him funding the junkie's suicide in After Life isn't that it's completely unrealistic or outlandish in and of itself, more that it goes remarkably unexamined afterwards.  The latter portion of the show has Ricky's character dealing with a lot of reflection and guilt for like ... taking the piss out of Diane Morgan or whatever, but aside from him casually telling his brother-in-law that he funded the junkie's death, it's never brought up again and has no significant impact on the character or the story.  He even turns up to comfort his prozzie mate and is late to the funeral etc., but at no point does he bring up or even seem to consider that he was responsible. 

It's odd, because it actually seems like an obvious plot point to motivate his "redemption" - like a rock-bottom, or seeing that his nihilism actually had a tangible negative impact on others (a bodycount, in this instance).  I can't tell if it's down to a case of lazy rewrites or whether Gervais is truly that incompetent, but it's properly bizarre as it is.

[paruses]

Imagine how poignant Gervais thought it would be that Tony missed the funeral.

Oh, and the stand up comedy bit. That is the antithesis of everything he has preached for the last 5 years, isn't it?

I wish I hadn't bothered with this while thing; I am just being frustrated with a low quality drama assignment.

[BritishHobo]

It's only just occurred to me really what's so odd about this show - the vast majority of 'awful' things Tony does are totally designed for Gervais fans to love and laugh at. Sneering at fat people, bollocking power-tripping minimum wage staff, taking the piss out of Diane Morgan for being Christian, and thick, and Christian, and boring, bullying his little mate for being daft and weird-looking. You're not really watching a descent, are you, because you're meant to laugh and cheer at all the things he's doing. All he's doing is saying the things Ricky Gervais already says. At the end there's no clear way to differentiate why he was wrong to say those things but Gervais isn't. The stand-up bit sticks out like a sore thumb because suddenly out of nowhere Tony becomes someone who would get personally offended at a comedy show because the joke hits too close to home, like when that mother criticised a special needs joke Gervais or Jimmy Carr or someone did, because her daughter had special needs. Then the brother-in-law becomes the Gervais stand-in, telling him blah blah blah you've confused the target of the joke and subject of the joke blah blah blah, it's not about you, don't get offended blah blah blah. It flips for that one scene, which just doesn't work.

Really the only other things he does that Gervais doesn't already do and Gervais fans wouldn't cheer as funny and smart, are do heroin, threaten to batter a child, and kill a drug-addict. And as you've all said, the latter gets zero introspection.

Does he think that the scene with the brother-in-law where the brother-in-law bollocks Tony for joking about killing the addict, does he think that that is Tony at his lowest point, realising what an awful thing it was? 'Cos it doesn't really come across at all, but it's the only time it's ever talked about after the death.

[Bryan Cocks]

Just sat through episode one. This is basically just an excuse for him to say cunt a lot and make jokes about fat people, isn't it? Everything seemed to revolve around that, anything else was just a tool for it to happen. Gervais does play depressed well, but any empathy for him vanishes whenever he opens his mouth. The show isn't cleverly written enough for Tony's obsession with obesity to tie back in to his relationship with Lisa, he just comes off totally dislikeable which makes me not care what happens to him and therefore disinterested in watching episode 2.

The one truly depressing thing about After Life is that anybody laughed watching it.

[Enrico Palazzo]

https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/1107218520906088448

Crying with laughter emoji.

The 'get her, boys' responses to that tweet are horrible.

[Ferris]

https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/1107218520906088448

Crying with laughter emoji.

The 'get her, boys' responses to that tweet are horrible.

Finally, a reason for the Sunday Times to exist.

What a cunt Gervais is.

[garbed_attic]

https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/1107218520906088448

Crying with laughter emoji.

The 'get her, boys' responses to that tweet are horrible.

All the non-ironic/ post-ironic/ ??? cries for "NAME AND SHAME!"

[Fambo Number Mive]

https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/1107218520906088448

Crying with laughter emoji.

The 'get her, boys' responses to that tweet are horrible.

A few blue-ticked celebrities jumping on that bandwagon as well, if you keep scrolling through the replies.