Ricky Gervais's After Life series 3 [split topic]

[MrsWarboysLover]

My favourite thing about afterlife is that Ricky must be seething that he's having to make a TV show, in England.

[phes]

He hasn't given a shred of thought to themes like grief and depression. It just another case of him shoehorning having the last word (remember him saying/quipping that depression and bipolar was just a fashionable celebrity malady https://vimeo.com/103438537 ) into the only thing he knows: being a cunt

[Spongo McChongo]

He was brilliant in that

[Dr Rock]

Does the dead wife ever say anything like 'after I'm dead, I don't want you to be alone forever. You've got a lot of life ahead of you, one day find someone else, fall in love again, it's ok'

If not, what a selfish dead wife she is. I feel many people in that situation would say that, but it would knacker the show, so she doesn't.

[phes]

She isn't dead, she's living a better life in harlow

For the big man with massive balls who says what he likes and to hell with those wokes he sure has dedicated a lot of his career to transforming himself into an irreproachable gestalt entity. So far he's a widowed, depressed, dog-loving, magical disabled person

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

She isn't dead, she's living a better life in harlow

maybe that's season 4. Tony finds out dead wife's alive and well, 6 episodes of him following her round with a video camera calling her a cunt while everyone else says how wonderful he is.

[paruses]

Award for the most obscure but well observed reference goes to you.

Thanks. I wish I had more to be proud of but this is likely to be a high point of my month.

[TheQueensboroBridge]

His treatment of the nurse one is just terrible - just remembered how she was one rung worse than Beverley Allitt because she didn't find the lemon with eyes drawn on one of the funniest things ever. No matter that we see in yet more recorded footage that it was a big in-joke about things with faces on. But then at the end Kind Tony does release  her so the old flame can have a go on her. The nods of acceptance where Alpha Tony gives his blessing to Beta Flame is very funny. No matter that their entire relationship seemed to consist of him saying he was going for a round-shouldered waddle to the pub if she wanted to come along.

When his dead wife was alive he must have gone round like Lee Evans in that film where he records his every moment with a bodycam to insure against being falsely accused of a crime again.

I think someone up thread already said it but what really stood out was that at least in the previous two series as far as I remember Tony was a complete dick but to obviously horrible or annoying people.

In this series it was incredible how badly he treats the Nurse, the brother in law, Diane Morgan, the pub landlord, even the land rover driver who really didn't deserve having his car windscreen smashed through for being slightly over eager at a  pedestrian crossing.

It baffles the mind that Gervais could possibly see this awful, awful man as any kind of anti-hero. He's just a prick.

Also, how come Tony is just given carte blanche to wonder in and out of a Nursing Home whenever he wants and not only that but go and sit down in a residents room and no one thinks it's a bit odd? I understand you have to have artistic licence but it's especially jarring when it's so obviously not a sitcom but a 'comedy drama'. That's why his fortuitous encounters with Bench Woman stand out so badly. If it was a proper sitcom you'd just ignore it, like the way the Friends always got the big massive couch in the middle of a busy coffee shop in New York. Afterlife presents itself as grounded in reality but is utterly ludicrous.

[shlug]

How heavy is the average cactus? Is it enough to smash a 4x4's rear window with it pulling away from the projectile cactus? Are we to believe Tony is some sort of Herculean demigod with the strength to hurl a cactus with such tremendous velocity and pinpoint accuracy? Boy I hope someone got fired for that blunder.

Jokes aside, at least the physics of Cactusgate are more believable than any of the supporting characters.

[rue the polywhirl]

Having watched all 6 episodes and having read some of Ricky Gervais's own interviews I'm happy to declare and he is happy to declare this series After Thought. It circles the drain in so, so many repetitive circles. Doesn't add anything whatever new. It has some laughs but always goes for the easiest, most hollow laughs. Every character apart from Tony has devolved and is a worse, more pathetic version of themselves compared to the last series. Characterisation for characters new and old defaults to cardboard cut-out instantaneous and to new cardboard depths. It's so radically dishonest as well. Does Shrek character bill simply take every bit of Ricky Gervais abuse on the chin without not a whisper of complaint? Does Tony not have a single bad memory of his dead wife? I found episode 6 where Tony has his epiphany and gives a cheque to his brother in law to be worst 2 minutes of emoting. The former is not even trying, not even slightly believing what he's saying and the latter just holds a fixed position of confused, static grief, definitely from poor direction. And the last few seconds just wishes it was Blackadder 4. Great soundtracks. Absolutely sick of the sight of Kerry Godliman. Almost thought towards the end there was a potential match up of Dianne Morgan and Gervais.

[kalowski]

You know how people use Stevie Wonder and Rod Stewart as examples of artists whose later work is a pale imitation of their great early work? Gervais is now the archetype.
After Life = I Just Called to Say I Love You or The Motown Record.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

And the last few seconds are a shameless rip off of the very last episode of " Still Game" more than wishing to be the last bit of Blackadder 4, I would have thought.

I've only seen the trailer for this series, but I know damn well what a load of shit it is.

[neveragain]

One thing to be taken from After Life is (via CaB) it's got me watching Still Game. What a lovely warm show.

I also agree with phes that there's nothing in the show about the psychology of grief and depression. I look at Bojack Horseman and think God, what a brilliant insightful show and will myself slide into a depression if it's not remembered as such while this load of tosh is lauded to the skies.

[dead-ced-dead]

I also feel there's a touch of The Detectorists being pinched here. The overall gentleness of the village setting mixed with a climax where everyone's friends. Seems very Detectorists.

[neveragain]

Another series with much greater nuance and intelligence.

[MrsWarboysLover]

I read an interview excerpt with him and the Chubby Funster is denying that the James Corden character was based on James Corden.
I don't believe you, Rick. Play a record.

[idunnosomename]

I also feel there's a touch of The Detectorists being pinched here. The overall gentleness of the village setting mixed with a climax where everyone's friends. Seems very Detectorists.

you're right, he's trying to riff off that. except Detectorists is good. and filmed in Essex, while most of this is in Herts

[samadriel]

Sort of like this...

What a bizarre place for a TV.

[Captain Z]

Hi Ricky, took my grandmother to sit on one of your After Life benches, but the couple already sitting there didn't move. Thought of you, and put a brick through their car window. #Bemorekind

[up_the_hampipe]

Wow, I didn't know Ash Atalla had come out against the jokes Gervais used to make about him. Gervais' response is very telling, immediately on the defensive: "Well, he didn't tell me!"

The impression I got from those British Comedy Awards speeches was that there must have been an established rapport between them. But the fact that he'd just make all these disabled jokes to one of his employees and Atalla decided to just go along with it. What a shitbag. He was such a loudmouth 40-year-old school bully and everyone encouraged it. Let's not forget poor Nigel the editor.

For such an atheist, this whole kindness schtick comes across like he's trying to bargain his way into heaven after a life of rotten behaviour.

[Mr Faineant]

God almighty, I just popped season 3 on for an hour. This show has gone from shit to fucking shit. Unbelievable.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Reading this thread makes me feel jealous. I wish I had enough free time to watch half the stuff I think I'd enjoy, let alone enough time to watch something I know I'll hate.

[mrspangles]

I read an interview excerpt with him and the Chubby Funster is denying that the James Corden character was based on James Corden.
I don't believe you, Rick. Play a record.

When you have the third writer of The Wrong Mans playing your brother-in-law and you're literally filming these scenes in a town Corden lived in, about 5 miles from his family home? Hmm

[mrspangles]

How much of this show is actually written? seems like David Earl/Brian Gittens, Tim Key, Diane Morgan et al are just asked to do a bit of what they do

[paruses]

How much of this show is actually written? seems like David Earl/Brian Gittens, Tim Key, Diane Morgan et al are just asked to do a bit of what they do

I don't know David Earl's stuff (which I need to remedy) but I think I said above that Tim Key's bit certainly felt like it was written by someone else - although it might just have been his delivery. Having said that I can't imagine the Chubby Funster allowing anyone else to use his pen.

[MrsWarboysLover]

Then again, he's incredibly lazy. I find it hard to believe it wasn't Smerch doing all the typing in the Office days.

[The Ombudsman]

Then again, he's incredibly lazy. I find it hard to believe it wasn't Smerch doing all the typing in the Office days.

Sums it up

[Jack Shaftoe]

One of those shitty benches is coming to my home town. LIVID.

[mrspangles]

I don't know David Earl's stuff (which I need to remedy) but I think I said above that Tim Key's bit certainly felt like it was written by someone else - although it might just have been his delivery. Having said that I can't imagine the Chubby Funster allowing anyone else to use his pen.

Not his bits, certainly - but as shown, I can't imagine he gives the slightest fuck about what other people have to say, nor the inclination to write it.

[Ferris]

One of those shitty benches is coming to my home town. LIVID.

Are the benches real? Assumed they were a piss-take.