According to multiverse theory, there are parallel realities in which news of a new Ricky Gervais project instils a feeling other than dread. But we don’t live in them. Having seen his new series, Alley Cats (Netflix, from Friday 7 August), a boorish banter-vehicle in which animated cats shoot the breeze like a bunch of pub bores, I’m not sure what there is to report – other than the fact that I didn’t laugh once. Considering what a fan I once was, I find this remarkable. What happened?
Woke happened, is what his diehard fans would say. Gervais has paid the price of a shifting Overton window on jokes about dwarves and disabled people and trans people. You can’t say anything any more, they lament, while defending a wealthy, highly platformed man who proves the opposite. They’re not wrong, though – politics plays a part. While writing this, I stepped outside to say hello to a queer friend who was, naturally, buying a bicycle in the street. I asked her what she made of Ricky Gervais.
“He’s defunct. We don’t need him any more,” she said, as if describing DVDs by post. His work didn’t make her laugh now, she said, but added that this was a relief. If he was both problematic and she found him funny, she’d have to suffer a contradiction within herself. He’d let her off the hook; but a comedian’s politics and their craft are still different things.
I like contradictions and dislike safe comedy. I actually agree that swathes of our culture are risk-averse and boring. Nothing makes me laugh harder than a good transgressive joke. Humour is often about dissolving dogma, acting as a safety valve for our collective id. The darker meats, close to the bone, have the juiciest flavour. But “good” is as important as “transgressive”. Alley Cats leans on one at the expense of the other. That’s why it limps.
The series follows a gang of stray cats, who mostly spend their time watching TV on a sofa in a derelict house. Gus, voiced by Ricky Gervais, is a fat ginger tom, who bellows ignorant or misanthropic opinions over everyone else. Ponce, voiced by Tom Basden, is a pampered, middle-class pedigree who talks sense but is fatally undermined because he has no balls, lol. Then there’s Puke (David Earl), a mangy pervert with a penchant for inter-species sex who says things such as “I gave a hedgehog anal once”.
Jokes like this, about having weird sex with animals, come up every episode. There are jokes about fat people, blind cats, intellectual disabilities. Gus swears in every line, the way some Brits do, with a habitual fondness for the worst swear word, the one that gives Americans conniptions. The show is lazy and pleased with itself. The more it was determined to shock, the more I checked my watch. The episodes are 15 minutes long – but feel much longer.
The weight-bearing comic idea here, that cats are arseholes, feels about 30 years old at a minimum. Animal sex, bum stuff, the ambient sense that gay is funny – these are all jokes I remember people making at school. I didn’t find them funny then either. They have aged like milk, but the main point is that they have aged. They’re predictable. Humour relies on surprise, and there are none here. The lad banter does give way to sentiment, predictably every episode, with the finesse of a chop shop. And then Cat Stevens plays.
Every beer-slopping geezer I know has borrowed Gervais’s comic rhythms. Biting their lower lip with guitar-hero sensuality, dominating conversations with glib comebacks that expose a squirrelly self-loathing. I’d still argue he’s only a rung below Tony Hancock, Monty Python and Richard Curtis in terms of importance to British comedy. The Office and Extras were, respectively, the most influential and funniest sitcoms of the 00s. His podcast helped define the medium. He’s done sophisticated character work, written love and friendship stories that made my heart bigger. Now it’s contracting again, like a universe imploding on itself. We’re a long way from Slough, and this alley feels like a dead end.
