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Ricky Gervais – After Life: Review

“Happiness is amazing. It’s so amazing it doesn’t matter if it’s yours or not.”

If anybody reading this hasn’t joined the hype about Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix Original series, After Life, then stop what you’re doing immediately and watch all six episodes in one sitting. I say this because that is exactly what you will do, it’s what I did and it’s what all the people I have spoken to about the series did themselves. It is so good.

The quote above is one of many profound words uttered by life-hating Tony, played by Gervais himself, who has recently lost his wife to breast cancer and is generally hating everything about this wonderful thing we call living.

Working for a local newspaper, he shows an intern the ropes on how boring his job as an amateur journalist is when he writes stories on uninteresting and, in his opinion, not news worthy events. From a young lad who can play two recorders at once through his nostrils to a man who has a stain in his house that he believes looks like Kenneth Branagh, Tony sees his career as nonsense and feels that there is no point in anything.

His daily situation worsens with his father in a care home suffering badly from Alzheimer’s disease and his nephew getting bullied at school so he regularly hooks up with the local crack head to numb the pain before planning to end it altogether.

Of course, you’re now thinking why on earth am I recommending this series to you because it sounds extremely depressing. Trust me, it’s not.

Aside from the negatives, After Life is filled with amazing moments that make you smile and hilarious comments that will have you laughing continuously throughout.

It is a series that shows the importance of dogs, the amazing things that they can do and how good they make us feel.

It is a series that shows how much death can teach us about life and how loved ones live on in one way or another. Whether it’s through material that they leave behind (in Tony’s case this is in the form of videos from his wife used for guidance) or the way we can still speak to them at the graveside shown through the character Ann.

It is a series that makes the mundane laughable, but also hits you with an injection of reality in the different paths that people take in life and how many struggle to cope.

It is a series that will have you laughing, being gobsmacked at certain lines spoken and crying real tears through the emotional aspects.

It covers all bases of life and it is definitely worth your time.

It is a series that shows reality: the good, the bad and the bloody hilarious.

For now though, I will leave things on a high with another wonderful quote from the brilliant show:

“If the kindest souls were rewarded with the longest lives, dogs would outlive us all”

How true is that? Enjoy!