After Life, review: Ricky Gervais shines in a laconic, scorched-earth portrait of grief

Ricky Gervais will never escape The Office and in a career sense is destined to spend the rest of his life locked in a windowless room with David Brent. Yet it’s telling how far from the fly-on-the-wall cringe-fest with which he forged his reputation he has since traveled.

Sincerity laced with nihilism was the dominant tone of both Extras and Derek – outwardly slight shows with a great deal to say about the human condition. And the black comedy dosage is upped to eye-watering levels on After Life. This is a devastating and funny – if never quite devastatingly funny – exploration of bereavement in which Gervais plays a widower climbing out of a bottomless pit of grief.

The humour is unquestionably Brent-adjacent throughout a six-part Netflix series written and directed by Gervais. There are jokes about body odour, senility and the soul-sapping pointlessness of the 9-to-5 slog (the irony being Gervais, like Bruce Springsteen, has never held down a conventional office job).

Yet within the comedic velvet glove is a fist of bone-crunching pathos, as we follow shell-shocked local newspaper journalist Tony in the stunned silence after the death of his beloved Lisa from cancer.

Having decided, on balance, not to kill himself, Tony is a man shrieking into the void. But he is also cursed with the self-awareness to know how little is to be achieved by shrieking into the void. So he clutches at coping mechanisms. These include habitually insulting his photographer best pal (Tony Way), openly mocking his editor (Lisa’s brother) and subsisting on dog-food and whisky (and also heroin, which he gives a whirl largely out of boredom).

As with The Office, Gervais offsets the cruelty with a sympathetic supporting ensemble. David Bradley plays Tony’s doddering father, Ashley Jensen the care home nurse with whom Tony incrementally strikes up a connection. Paul Kaye has fun as a self-absorbed psychiatrist, who spends all his time on Twitter as his client unburdens himself.

As Tony's ineffective, well meaning boss Tom Basden meanwhile delivers a low-key David Brent homage, so that it feels occasionally as if Gervais is acting opposite his mirror image. Funniest of all is Diane Morgan, riffing on her Philomena Cunk persona as a secretary thrilled by her own stupidity. We also meet Lisa (Kerry Godliman) via the tear-jerking home movies Tony stays up all night staring at on his laptop.

After Life is often pitiless and hard to watch – but those are the moments Gervais’s earnestness shines most brightly. Suicide, assisted dying and the possibility of love after loss are all fed into the comedy mill.

And though the gags are occasionally absurdist (at one point Tony must interview a local boy who plays the recorder with his nostrils) the underlying sensibility never is. A one time indie rock band manager, Gervais has always retained something of a punk spirit. Under the laconic chuckles After Life is at once a scorched-earth portrait of grief and an impassioned exhortation to keep living.

After Life is on Netflix now