Third season
Drama and comedy go hand in hand in this gem with which Netflix once again makes it clear that it also knows how to make quality content
One of the attacks that is often launched against Netflix is that the company only produces low-quality content. This is how a company is drawn that seems to try to fill its offer as if it were a fast food restaurant, targeting all kinds of niches, but without soul or heart. Products that quench hunger and thirst at a given time, but leave no residue. These same detractors compare their journey with that of HBO, as if it had not concocted any trick. It is a clearly simplistic and somewhat snobbish reduction. They seem to forget that along with products like ‘Elite’, ‘I’m Georgina’ or ‘Intruders’, such wonderful series as ‘The Crown’, ‘Mindhunter’, ‘Lady’s Gambit’, ‘ The curse of Hill House’, ‘Orange is the New Black’, ‘Love’ or the most recent ‘Arcane’ and ‘Midnight Mass’.
‘After Life’, the series written and directed by Ricky Gervais, belongs, without a doubt, to this last group. The creator of ‘The Office’ culminates with this third and final season his particular story about the duel and he does it in a dazzling way, appealing to emotions, but without falling into kitsch. To summarize, the series follows in the footsteps of Tony (Gervais), the editor of a small local newspaper who, at the beginning of the fiction, has just lost his wife, Lisa (Kerry Godliman), due to cancer. She was the one who gave meaning to his life and since then he sees no reason to move on. Cynical and moody, Tony finds himself deep in grief, unable to accept that his wife is no longer there. He drowns his sorrows in drink and spends every night watching videos of Lisa where laughter and smiles are the constant tonic, until he falls asleep next to his dog.
This third season maintains the dry, abrupt and even uncomfortable style that characterizes Gervais’s narrative, but it remains round in terms of the plot arc of a character who, although he remains focused on his grief, ends up opening up to others and assuming that despite the death of his partner, life goes on and the pain ends up softening. And boy does it. There are the curious characters that the protagonist gives voice to in his articles – from a couple who run a swingers club to a fortune teller who self-publishes erotic novels about doctors – and, of course, the people who swarm around her. Anne (Penelope Wilton), the widow with whom he shares much of his feelings when he visits his wife’s grave, has just found a partner. Tony also maintains his friendship with Emma (Ashley Jensen), the nurse who took care of his father, but remains undecided about the possibility that this affection will go further. With his brother-in-law Matt (Tom Basden), the director of the newspaper where he works, he usually behaves like a jerk, and yet he has infinite appreciation for him, and then there is everything surrounding the death of his father (David Bradley) .
Along the way, juicy disquisitions about the unexpected of death, illness, human relationships and a last episode as heartbreaking and emotional as it is brilliant. And then they say that on Netflix there is only ‘fast food’. Fake.
All three seasons of ‘After Life’ are available on Netflix.