Say what you want about who Ricky Gervais used to be to people, but today’s Ricky Gervais seems to be just a bit of a grifter. For a long time now, this has been Ricky’s career:
- Write something intentionally offensive.
- Perform it on a show or put it in the script of his next TV series.
- Gain publicity by saying people are too offended by it.
- Go as far to make fun of people for being offended in your next show.
- Back to step one.
His latest grift is his new Netflix show, Alley Cats, which I shall not be watching. But since it’s a case study, here’s a clip Ricky shared as promotion for the show:
In what world you would consider this a worthy clip to promote the “comedy” of your show is beyond me. There are no jokes here. Not set ups. Not punchlines. Not even a set up and payoff. But I guess when Ricky says “I love when a fucking suicide bomber goes off in his aunt’s basement” is the part I’m supposed to laugh at, right? I mean “fucking” is a swear word and those are funny. And “suicide bombers” are bad, so if their bombs went off at the wrong time that also makes me laugh, surely?
Beyond that, laughing at the absurd ways they’d like to see people die with zero empathy is the point of the scene: It is by design that at least one of these “jokes” is offensive to someone in the audience, and intended that they’ll post to social media about how awful it is. This is so that Ricky can bookmark it and use it to either promote the show further or use it as material in his next stand-up show.
It seems no one, as of writing that I can find, has taken his bait. So he has tweeted about his show being offensive despite the fact there has been no backlash at all about the offensiveness of the contnet:
So the biggest joke to come out of this is the guy who thrives when people are offended by his comments has no one to poke fun at for being offended, but still has to market this thing somehow and thus pretends people are offended by it. Marvellous.
So, to wrap this up, if you are offended by anything Gervais has said do not say anything. This man wants you to be offended so he can hollar his song and make money from your negative feelings.
Alex's Review Corner 
Well it’s on Netflix so I don’t have to worry about ever seeing it! I liked The Office. That clip of the cats talking about people dying isn’t offensive but just isn’t funny, I agree.
You’ve made it halfway through Blaugust! Congratulations!
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Thanks!
Ricky is a weird guy. I used to find him quite funny. He definitely has some good stuff, it just seems so cynical and terminally online now.
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I noticed this on Netflix’s new shows list earlier today and immediately added it to my watchlist I did see Ricky Gervais’ name attached but I didn’t think much of it. I’ve never watched a single episode of anything he’s done or seen his stand-up act so I don’t really have any opinion of him. I just saw a show about cats that looked, from the screenshot they’re using as a thumbnail, like it would be well-drawn and animated.
I was imagining something like Lisa Kudrow’s “Housebroken”, which I really enjoyed, especially the first series. That had some crude humor but it was well-written and had great characters. Having watched the clip above, I’ll be taking it off my watchlist and forgetting about it. It’s not offensive. It’s just not funny.
What it reminds me of is Peter Cook and Dudley Moore doing Derek and Clive, which had the same premise of two guys talking about very offensive topics while swearing non stop. That, though, was in the 1970s and they both had mainstream careers so it was genuinely subversive, not to mention funny. Is anyone still shocked by swearing like that half a century later? And if they are, would they be watching a Ricky Gervais show?
I love a bit of creative swearing. A well-placed expletive can be very effective. I also understand the attritional use of a constant stream of invective for dramatic effect. This neither. It’s just boring.
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I also think edgy humour, swearing and even cheap shock humour have their place. I mean a good pun is usually just a shockingly bad joke that is funny. But it doesn’t work when they’re just thrown randomly at a wall. They are still like any other type of humour where they have to be worked, not just spouted.
It is odd to me because Gervais has done some funny stuff in the past – genuinely funny. I think, and this is pure speculation, at some point he became terminally online and that caused his focus on “political correctness” and “free speech” to sky rocket, seeing the world through the cynisim of social media cliques. He wouldn’t exactly be alone in falling into such a trap, but I don’t like how he seems to use it to intentionally rile people up.
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