After Life · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 8 March 2019
S1E1 Episode 1
THE MOMENT The first video message from Tony's wife: the tone-setter that makes clear this show intends to be both funny and genuinely painful.
Tony's morning routine - the video messages from his dead wife, the dog, the commute to a newspaper nobody reads - establishes the show's register with quiet precision. Gervais is performing a man performing grief as armour, and the gap between the two is where the comedy lives.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
The 'After Life' premiere works because Ricky Gervais understands that Tony Johnson's grief is not the actual subject of the comedy - the performance of grief-as-armour is. Tony has decided after his wife's death to say and do whatever he wants, under the logic that nothing can hurt him anymore; the premiere demonstrates that this logic produces behaviour that is funny, cruel, and secretly terrified in roughly equal measure. The show's formal device - the video messages Tony's wife recorded before her death, each one watched at the start of the day - establishes a register the premiere needs to earn before the comedy can land. Kerry Godliman's Lisa is present only on a tablet screen in Season 1, and the warmth she manages to project from a recorded medium is the first indication that the show is doing something more careful than its logline suggests. 94% RT first season.