I’d heard rumours. “There’s a new Gervais incoming,” whispered a friend. “It’s got cats in it”. I dismissed it as a lie: “What would Gervais want with cats?” I scoffed. But the rumours just got louder. “The cats can SWEAR,” said another friend. “They swear all the time”. And then, sitting on the 134, an old man sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s not just swearing,” he said. “There’s also a moral.” Back in my flat, I had to face it: these people were telling the truth. Gervais was getting into cats, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Alley Cats is what it’s called. Rupert (Tom Basden) is the upper-class ponce, Olive (Diane Morgan) his slightly dippy love interest, Fang (Andrew Brooke) is the working class diamond-in-the-rough, while Puke (David Earl) will have sex with anything that moves. But it’s not about them, of course. It’s about Gus (Ricky Gervais), the hard-bitten feline with a heart of gold. In the first episode they stumble on Kitten (Jo Hartley), who’s looking for her family. Gus takes her under his wing, and then the philosophising starts. Did you know Ricky Gervais is an atheist? Well, he is! But that doesn’t mean he’s not spiritual. Take this slice of homespun wisdom:
KITTEN: I don’t want to not exist. I want to live forever!
GUS: Well, in a way we do live forever because we live on in the memories of the friends and family that knew us and they remember things we did and said and … so even though we’re not around sort of physically we are sort of still here in a way.
KITTEN: So you’ll live on forever through all the things you’ve taught me?
GUS: Yeah.
(Episode 2, “Havoc”)
It’s shit, of course. Obviously, it’s shit. How could it be anything other than shit? The script is GCSE drama level awful and if you don’t think the word ‘cunt’ is an adequate substitute for a punchline, then you won’t get much change out of Alley Cats. The only saving grace is the animation by Blink Studios, who made Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, but will probably leave Gervais’s latest cash-grab off their showreel.* But there’s also something truly weird about the show, its wild shifts in mood laughable, but almost endearing for taking you into the mind of its deeply needy creator. Alley Cats is a typical slice of late Gervais, which means it’s unfunny and crude, but also grasping for a significance it never finds. “Created, written and directed by Ricky Gervais” has become a cautionary tale for would-be creative geniuses: beware the man with no-one left to tell him “no”.
* Actually, it is on their showreel and above DHMIS so what do I know?
Sarah Stringer
Alex Finch