Stewart Lee reviews Ricky Gervais' Afterlife

[medalion]

I don’t think many appreciate just how much Stephen Merchant brought to those initial projects that the two of them had so much success with.

[robroy]

The success of Afterlife is genuinely baffling, i say this as a ricky gervais fan.

[redmondo]

Every episode of Afterlife:
1. Gervais watches videos of his dead wife, resolves to kill himself.
2. He encounters someone with an irritating habit (munching, slurping, etc.), calls them a c***.
3. He encounters someone with a stupid opinion, recycles his stand-up material on science, religion, etc.
4. He talks to a woman on a bench, realises life is worth living.
5. He talks to a nurse, realises life is worth living.
6. He talks to a prostitute, realises life is worth living.
7. Episode ends with a montage and uplifting track from the 80s.

[ProjectFlashlight]

Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco 'Pancho" Villa has let himself go.

[ihateunicorns]

I dumped my counsellor because she recommended Afterlife to me during a session.

[sacred]

I don't mind Gervais but nothing ever came close to The Office which made you wonder how much influence Merchant had.

[guitarreilly]

You just know rocky gervais has watched this and cried

[jamesjross]

I'm a widower (show off!) and felt the forced emotion really started to grate on me. Like it was saying "CRY NOW YOU SAD TWAT!" - and what got me more is in the first episode - using depression as some sort of superpower, on face value and probably because what I was personally going through (or had recently been through) - I found that desirable. The mugging scene for example. Then I caught myself having those emotions and thought on the whole premise and how paper thin it was. I felt like a 7 year old me wanting to be Michael Jackson. I was annoyed at myself and embarrassed. Something similar had happened a couple years before... I actually went back to church briefly during the grieving process before two weeks of bible readings shook it out of me. Listening to elderly folk read a old testament parable then shoehorn the moral into current events was enough to wake me up. I used to think in Sunday School I must have been read the Children's version because they read like a children's adaptations of Aesop's fables. Two weeks into church it struck me that it wasn't a children's version - they are all just that way, and its silly and If I want to spend Sundays trying to kid myself into believing my wife being conscious on some astral plane, I can have a lie in and do it at a more reasonable hour in the comfort of my bed. To get back to Afterlife - Realising how crap this was and how it took me in at first, made me feel the same kind of embarrassment, shame and self loathing I felt about having a Catholic relapse.

[brhodes]

Stewart Lee laughing at himself will always be brilliant.

[jonathanbailey]

Ricky Gervais is an odd one because I love The Office, Extras as well as his excellent podcasts and XFM shows with Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington. He is a brilliantly witty and intelligent person. Those attributes and qualities can't be faked and don't happen by accident. However his stand-up is really, really third rate and his comedy dramas have got worse and worse with Derek and Afterlife in particular being self-indulgent and self-righteous crap. Brent: The Movie was poor too. I agree with people who have commented that Steve Merchant was a stabilising influence in terms of quality control. Merchant's best work was with Gervais as well. I guess sometimes a partnership is far greater than the sum of its parts, a la Lennon / McCartney or Morrissey / Marr.

[russelledwards]

William shatter has really sorted himself out.

[UnlikelyReply]

I'm glad I've found somebody with merit talking about how bad afterlife is. The series is so bad it's cringe worthy yet Gervais gets away with it.

[elvisleeboy]

The argument that the series is poor because it is bereft of what would be taught in creative writing and drama classes is a woefully bad one and baffling considering that Lee is renowned for defying the conventions of stand up comedy. He just seems to have a distrust of mainstream comedy with a broad appeal and is motivated by a wish to feel better than those who enjoy it. Funny that he should be saying all this to someone who was in Gavin and Stacy.

[Garbageman]

The funniest part of stew’s recent gervais baiting is that the offender hasn’t said a bloody word. And knowing how much time he spends online, posting pictures of his face he took in the bath and arguing with trans teenagers on twitter, there’s no way he hasn’t seen it.

[raminybhatti]

I'm a Gervais fan, not a Lee fan, but Afterlife is torrid. Merchant was the brains and temperance of their partnership. Without him, there's nobody to tell Gervais "No".

[pdjhh]

Is the full version of this around somewhere?

[TheRealDioBrando]

After Life felt like Ricky started with "I want to make jokes about disableds and call women the c word like I used to be able to do" then worked back from there to build the concept.

[glowing]

Stewart Lee is spot on about Gervais in terms of diminishing returns and After Life is truly terrible. That being said, Lee himself is falling down that same hole based on the last time I saw him live (and I have seen him live 4-5 other times when he was good). He is losing his touch with the whole 'let's repeat the same thing over and over' to build to a joke because the details he repeats are getting less funny. He spent 15 minutes doing a routine about an ordinary person's working week, going into the office, saying hello, going to lunch, etc etc. After he spent 3 minutes doing Monday, he got some polite laughter, but there was nothing funny in the content to hold on to as he repeated it for the following days. As it went on I actually heard someone yawning and others were rustling in their bags/whispering to each other. By the time he eventually finished the punchline he got a bit of laughing which came off as relief it was finally over. At this rate I can see Lee ending up just a more left wing version of Ricky.

[OnChords]

My favourite work from ricky still is extras.

[MCHOKUM]

I am comforted by the fact that soon it will be just us again and people will stop asking Slobodan Molisevic why he has let himself go.