Review: In “After Life” Season 2, Ricky Gervais continues to not be as funny as in “The Office”

The second series of the dark comedy won’t win back those who left the comedian behind two or three sitcoms ago

I should probably preface this one by admitting that I think Ricky Gervais is funny. A weirdly divisive statement to make these days, and one I am about to caveat thoroughly, but I think that any review of Gervais’s work – and it is impossible to take Ricky Gervais (the concept) out of any show featuring Ricky Gervais (actor, writer, creator) – needs to state where you are, on him, as a person. So: The Office was a masterwork, I think his naughty-but-actually-not Golden Globes monologues are good and he tweets too much about rescuing dogs for my personal tastes but I know it comes from a place of sweetness. There.

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Rediscovering Ricky Gervais’s hilarious BBC comedy ‘Extras’

The show is filled with squirm-inducing humiliation and VIP cameos.

In the early days of Netflix streaming, not so long after it graduated from mailbox DVD delivery (if you remember that, you old fossil, you), its catalog was largely a sparse and obscure hodgepodge of films and TV series either long out of date or raked in from somewhere English-speaking but without American mass-market licensing fees.

I guess that’s how my wife and I found “Extras,” British comedian Ricky Gervais’s bargain-basement BBC follow-up series to “The Office,” about a pair of failed actors in their 40s doing background work, their dreams of fame withered and limp. Filled with A-list cameos — Orlando Bloom, Samuel L. Jackson, Sir Ian McKellen, Kate Winslet, all playing themselves against Gervais and costar Ashley Jensen’s pathetic overtures — “Extras” is backstage comedy played as theater of the absurd. Just one season was available on Netflix when we watched it all those years ago, which was just as well given its squirm-inducing level of humiliation comedy. Just last week, newly shut in, we found there was another whole season and dived in.

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Netflix Confirms Series Two Of Ricky Gervais’ After Life For April 24

Netflix has confirmed the entire second series of Ricky Gervais’ hit comedy drama After Life will drop in the streaming platform on April 24.

Ricky Gervais got a mixed reaction from Hollywood’s brightest and best when he gave them both barrels while presenting the Golden Globes, but he’s a firm favourite with fans of his television work.

From the fist-eatingly embarrassing David Brent in The Office to the heartbreaking Derek, he’s created characters and shows that love to unsettle us.

His most recent offering, After Life, fell squarely into that category when Netflix released it last year, and the great news is: it’s coming back [ . . . ]

Source: Netflix Confirms Series Two Of Ricky Gervais’ After Life For April 24