Afterlife series 2 [CONTAINS SPOILERS] - **Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[TofutiKline]

Binge watched it today. Loved it. Particularly the man who identifies as an 8 year old girl. The TRAs are going to hate it 😁

[AnyFucker]

Where is it on please

[MadisonAvenue]

We’ve watched and loved it!

Anyfucker it’s on Netflix.

[iklboo]

Ooh can you put SPOILERS in the title please? We've not had chance to watch it yet

[AnyFucker]

ta

[TofutiKline]

I’ve asked for SPOILERS in the title 😁

Hurry back anyone who watches it - itching to talk about it 😁

[TofutiKline]

Thank you HQ 😘

[TofutiKline]

So..... I think RG overdoes the swearing sometimes and drifts into gratuitous coarseness but I think the beautiful moments more than make up for that.

I loved seeing Penelope Wilton and Peter Egan together again 🥰

[MrAlyhakinsMassiveYacht]

The show made me laugh a lot. And the trans bit was hilarious. As was the plastic surgery lady.

And the writing was so good, so poignant about grief and loss and family. I watched it all in one go.

However, having seen his standup routine about his RL mother's actual funeral I was expecting more from the funeral in this.

[TofutiKline]

I like how he uses actors from his other shows. Plastic surgery lady was the young girl from Derek. The theatre director was Geoff from Derek. Lenny was in Derek.... etc. I’m sure I recognised the sweary 100 year old lady from somewhere too....

[TofutiKline]

.... oooh I was right!! It was Annette Crosbie from One Foot in the Grave! 😂

[MrAlyhakinsMassiveYacht]

Annette Crosby I think she was?

[TofutiKline]

Yep 😁

[Neverending2020]

Can't wait to binge watch this. I loved the first season.

[happinessischocolate]

Just finished watching it, haven't cried so much in a long time 🙁 how is it possible to laugh and sob at the same time. FFS Ricky I'm going to have puffy eyes tomorrow

[AlinaSquareQueen]

I absolutely love Afterlife and anything RG does, especially The Office.

I recommended Afterlife to my DM and DF, who are in their 80s, as something to binge-watch during lockdown. They absolutely love it too, despite the very strong language! My DM said it’s giving them some well-needed light relief from current global situation.

[Thisisworsethananticpated]

I’m binging series 2 ! It’s so bloody funny and awful

The stand up
The awful therapist
The fat clown
The postman

So good 😊 so bad

[TofutiKline]

I love Pat and Roxy together - so sweet. She’s a great character and beautifully acted. They all are to be fair.

[MyBlueMoonbeam]

Disappointed in Season 2

Therapist was gross had to fast forward those bits.

Workplace was too much like "The Office".

Acting was good but overall it was nowhere near as good as Season 1 for me.

[jay55]

I also didn't like the therapist. I get that, let's push as far as I can, is a RG thing but if have rather seen more from the women at work's lives.

But I cried for the last two episodes. A man dying in a care home without his son there is too much for me right now, even though he got to see him just before unlike the current reality.

The small comedy worked a lot better than the broad stuff for me.
Penelope Wilton was lovely.
The dog was gorgeous again.
And overall I really enjoyed it.

Need to watch something silly now to cheer up.

[Fleetheart]

I thought it was great
Much better than series 1. Therapist was a bit OTT and unbelievable; also the ending was not quite right. Not sure why all the ends had to be tied up like that. But overall really sensitive and well done. I loved the scenes with the postman. And the dog.

[Tanfastic]

I loved it, binge watched it this weekend. Preferred the second series to the first actually. The therapist 🥴😂😂😂 shocking!

I have never laughed and cried so much today, actually sobbing on last episode. Best telly in ages.

[Ihopeyourcakeisshit]

I've only seen the first 2 episodes, but I agree about the sweary bits and coarseness.
I'm no Mary Whitehouse but it just seemed gratuitous and unbelievable with the therapist.

[DeadBod]

Binged watched over 2 nights, loved it EXCEPT for the therapist, he got on my nerves.
His scenes with Penelope Wilton were my favourite.

[Minesacider]

I've just finished watching. Yes, some of it was extremely crude, and I could have done without those parts, but in the main I thought it was even better than S1. I binge watched over two days, because I really wanted to see where it went. Sad, and hilarious and poignant, I do t know how RG can write it so well, he's brilliant.

The scene with the middle aged man identifying as an 8yo girl was all the more hilarious because RG knows it will have people on Twitter gunning for him again. "You're not trans, you're having a fucking breakdown".

[ID040171]

I've just finished it and am glad to have had a fair few tearful moments of my own during it. I think the same show would have been received very differently if it had not been a Ricky Gervais vehicle or something written by anyone successful in comedy genuinely writing comic drama. It's had an especially vicious slating on the comedy forum Cookd n Bombd, from people who seem at least as at odds with their own sense of thwartedness and failure as Gervais. At least he is doing something constructive in carrying on undeterred. The first episode was a bit of a mess, and some of the ways it was reappeared. Comparing the level of subtlety to Derek though, it looks like Gervais is finding his voice in the way a good novelist has to. He's in his 50s, not fresh out of university, but is breaking away late from comedy that many of us have enjoyed but which inevitably comes easier because it only comes at all and has an energy if the comedian doesn't worry about the consequences of his thinking, whether through misunderstandings or not. I didn't finish Derek because the comedian's glibness and lack of brakes spoiled it. It was still a comedian's writing when more editing was needed. That's been improved upon in After Life series 2 - even the first series seemed to fall apart halfway through.

It'd be an understatement to say that Ricky hasn't handled fame well, that he'd do a better job of that and be received better if he binned his Twitter account. There are comedians who are 'always on' and ones who aren't. To go home from the writing room and have Twitter nearby must be the worst kind of being always on.

I think often I cried because when I look at my life and that of others I know there isn't growth. If anything a lot of people remain stuck as if archetypes. And maybe that is another reason why the comedy fans have had their ire for this series - either their cynicism made them sickened by signs of growth, after a couple of decades of aggressively mean-spirited and ugly humour, or they're just plain stuck, and the safety of their anger - which is really just aggressive embarrassment, like child caught stealing his mum's chocolate - and their cynicism feels, deceptively, more like strength than eve to entertain being clumsily kind, or to write with some clumsiness about kindness.

If he writes TV and films for another twenty years I think Gervais could still top The Office, maybe a few times.