After Life (2019) [Serial Review]

 

Directed and Written by: Ricky Gervais

Starring: Ricky Gervais, Tom Basden, Tony Way, Diane Morgan, Mandeep Dhillon

Dur: About 30 mins each. The whole series is only 6 episodes long.

Rating: 5/10

After Life presents itself as a comedy-drama but I didn’t find it either comedic or dramatic. There are elements of comedy and drama but not nearly in enough to term it a comedy-drama. The show came across to me as a reflection on grief. It is dark both in the nature of the theme it explores as well as in its development. Each episode is carried mostly by dialogue and very little background music. Music definitely would have helped to make the episodes more memorable and the times they do kick in (mostly at the start and end) the choice of songs are brilliant and effective.


Since it is written by Ricky, the series is highly sarcastic, critical of religion and pretty matter-of-fact in its dealing with sickness, age and death. Ricky’s character goes about in hopelessness after losing his wife to cancer. He takes digs at psychiatric help by depicting his shrink in bad light and almost mocking the whole practice of counselling and therapy. He is militant that religion has nothing to offer him. He is vocal against any suggestion that God and religion can help him cope better and tries to slam it down in typical atheistic antagonism. Interestingly, he has a non-religious woman talk sense to him and help him embrace hope. This itself is quite hypocritical in as much as an atheist chooses precisely the very thing that religion offers albeit in a non-religious way! This doesn’t make sense to me. Throughout the show, Ricky’s character is contemplating suicide but when he hears that doing good to others might help him cope with his situation and when he actually engages in it and finds it helpful he develops a renewed vigour for life. Not only that, the woman who gives him advice does not claim to believe in God but believes with all her heart that she is able to communicate to her dead husband! Definitely fishy but passed off casually. I don't want to get on a high horse about this but I think that atheists try really hard to show that they can be just as good without God. In doing so they do nothing more than dampen the energies of all those around them and make life seem like an absurd adventure. 

There are moments of laugh out loud moments but for that one must be willing to sit through the dry spells. I honestly don’t even want to watch the next season. He has already reached Season 3. I am done with this one. It was honestly just an explorative venture and I didn’t like what I found.

Trailer: After Life S1

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