NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 07: Comedian Ricky Gervais attends the "After Life" For Your ... [+]
After Life is about Tony, a journalist for a local free newspaper in the UK, who is stricken with grief after his wife dies from breast cancer. Created, produced and directed by Ricky Gervais, Season 1 revealed how Tony took his grief and anger out on the world by deciding to speak truths to all, regardless of how it affected others. No pretense. No filter. No one got spared.
In Season 2, Tony begins to pull himself out of the depths of despair by opening his awareness to the grief of others. There are no spoilers in this column, only fundamental truths that the show explores, making it stand far above the rest.
Truth #1: Everyone yearns for companionship. Season 2 more closely examines all those around Tony: a friend of Tony who grieves for her lost husband, a man who yearns for the return of his estranged wife, and a young lady who is disheartened over the lack of companionship. Season 2 makes it clear that we all need an enduring human connection.
Truth #2: Everyone has invisible wounds. Tony gradually pulls himself above his own grief, if only for brief moments, and slowly discovers that all of his coworkers and acquaintances are broken in small and large ways. The wounds are only visible if he takes the time to peer beneath the surface.
Truth #3: Comfort comes from healing others. Tony rises above his own grief only when he comforts others who grieve. He begins to understand that repairing wounds is better than inflicting them.
Truth #4: Everyone feels the need to matter. In his job as a journalist, Tony interviews seemingly odd people with odd human interest stories. What the people all have in common is the desire to see their names and stories in the newspaper. They all want to matter, to tell the world that they are alive, to show they have something to say.
Truth #5: Everyone does matter. After Life makes no judgments. The life of a struggling sex worker and postal carrier carry the same social weight as the wealthy owner of the newspaper, as demonstrated by each carrying the same universal loneliness and grief.
Truth #6: You cannot move forward by holding onto the past. Just when you think Tony is rising above his grief and self-pity, his daily diet of videotapes of his wife pulls him back down into despair. He watches happier times of wedding and birthday celebrations as well as tragic times as his dying wife struggled with her decline. Modern technology does not allow memories to fade, and so Tony cannot escape the vivid past of his despair.
Truth #7: Human connection tethers us to this life. Shakespeare’s Hamlet tells us that fear of what comes after death is what makes us reject suicide. Perhaps, but After Life also makes it clear that human connection tethers us to this life, making it meaningful and worth the effort.
After Life Season 2 would not work without Ricky Gervais and his continued masterful and believable performance as a devastated man who must learn to move on. This is not the Ricky Gervais as a flawed general manager of a paper company in the 2001 UK series The Office who makes embarrassing, inadvertent social faux pas on topics ranging from racism to sexism. Nor is it the Ricky Gervais as the aspiring actor in the 2005 UK series Extras who kisses up to celebrities and producers to get screen time. This is Ricky Gervais as a dramatic actor who understands the debilitating consequences of grief. His supporting cast and the unique characters they play are equally outstanding.
It is these universal, human truths and the performance of Gervais and his cast that makes After Life an outstanding television choice. Critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes for Season 2 are at 75% and audience scores are at 82%. They should be higher, if only critics and audiences would peer beneath the surface.
After Life is often described as a sitcom or black comedy-drama. That does not do it justice. Yes, you may smile at the complexities and absurdities of life, but it will not make you laugh as much as it will make you think about your own life, about the lives of those around you, and about how your real purpose is not to seek comfort for yourself, but to comfort others.
After Life Season 2 is painfully good.
