Even with the cursing and disgust: Ricky Gervais' new series managed to move us
The British comedian returns with "Alley Cats", an animated series where he voices a grumpy, filthy alley cat. As always with Gervais, behind the blatant misanthropy and outrageous jokes hides great compassion.
In an interview with "The Times" ahead of the premiere of his new Netflix series, "Alley Cats", Ricky Gervais was asked what animal he thinks he is. "An old, fat spaniel, who is still excited about the world and wants to run and have fun but much slower, with sore legs," he replied. On the other hand, Gervais admits that the main character of his new animated series, the alley cat Gus, was designed based on his own comedic persona: a lazy, fat, middle-aged cat, opinionated, who sits on the couch and yells at the TV. He thinks he's the boss, thinks he's smarter and cooler than he actually is. Gervais even gave him his own fangs.
So where does the gap between these two images close? "Alley Cats" will not solve the riddle for you. At most, it will give you a little more of the good old Gervais, if you are a loyal consumer of his work. Ultimately, this layering is Gervais' secret. From the maw of the chubby man with the high-pitched voice and almost refined nonchalance flows a stream of curses and profanity that would not shame a scurvy-ridden sailor. That has always been his trick. But if you peel back that "dirty mouth" a little, you discover a human being with deep compassion for animals, calibrated by a moral compass. Beneath that hides misanthropy, a genuine aversion to the humanity that exploits and hurts them.
With a filthy mouth, he is the leader of a group of alley cats living in a neglected alley. With him in the group are Fang (voiced by Andrew Brooke), the bully, and Fox (David Earl), the truly filthy cat. Occasionally, Fons (Tom Basden) comes to them, a groomed and pedantic cat who lives with a pampering family. Joining them is the cat from upstairs, Olive (Diane Morgan), whom Gus and his friends enjoy slandering, and if you persist, you will also meet Lara (Kerry Godliman), the cat Gus loves but doesn't feel good enough for.
The plot axis of the season's six episodes is the group's attempt to help Kitten (Jo Hartley), a small kitten who finds them in a cemetery in the first episode, find her home after she got lost. But of course, the true role of the innocent and non-cynical Kitten is to expose Gus's humanity and his soft sides. When the cats aren't slandering the humans they despise so much (each episode opens with all the cats sitting on a couch watching TV, and then spewing more filth about the human race, sounding as if it were taken from Gervais' stand-up show), they deal with lofty ideas like love, death, weaknesses, and the meaning of family.
The seams in "Alley Cats" are quite rough—a curse, a shocking statement, and then a soft descent into a human, exposed, and honest point. It is possible and desirable to like Gervais' attempt to fix humanity, his hope that if he tells us how stupid, disgusting, and cruel we are, we will understand the hint and try to improve. But the emotional depth that characterized "After Life" or even "Derek", and which allowed Gervais to throw all this crap at us and still keep us captivated, is not really present in "Alley Cats". It won't be pinned to his resume as a breakthrough, but it won't bother his die-hard fans either.
Ultimately, "Alley Cats" catches Gervais exactly in the bittersweet trap he has set for himself in recent years: he continues to insist on being the bad boy of comedy, cursing, insulting, and slaughtering norms, but we already know what is hidden under this villain mask. We know that beneath the misanthrope beats a soft heart, and that after all the jokes about death and disgust, there will eventually be some small moment of compassion. It's okay if he scratches, kicks, and tries to annoy; soon he will explain to us where we are wrong, and most likely we will even agree with him. So don't forget, it's hot today, leave some bowls of human love outside.
