So Hollywood, with its endless retakes, scripts and fear of spontaneity, lured Gervais away from his original brand of comedy. Those notorious appearances at the Golden Globe Awards indicated the diluted form of comedy America would demand. Weak scripted gags such as, “It’s going to be a night of partying and heavy drinking. Or, as Charlie Sheen calls it, breakfast,” were never going to offend anyone important (certainly not Sheen). The Globes were an advertisement for the Gervais Provocateur brand.
This role of comic “provocateur” was one with which Gervais happily played along to launch his US career. Why else would he have appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine dressed as Jesus with the word “atheist” scrawled across his chest?
But a CV of offensive comedy threatened to hamper his TV project Derek, in which he played a dim-witted retirement home worker. In an overhaul of the Gervais brand, the comedian decided in 2012 to remake himself as king of the “comedy of kindness”, a rebranding which worked so well that Gervais has earned a spot on the Independent on Sunday’s 2015 Happy List, for making the world a happier place.
Derek was billed as a mockumentary, akin to The Office. Yet Gervais assiduously denied any hint of mockery. Derek, he insisted, was about “kindness [being] more important than anything else”. Including comedy: without the “mock”, Derek was not offensive. But it was also not funny. As one TV critic succinctly summarised, it was “sub-Forrest Gump sympathy milking”.
By forgoing stand-up for film production, Gervais has turned his back on the spontaneity at the heart of comedy. Why is he producing the upcoming Netflix film Special Correspondents? Because “having shaken up the TV industry, Netflix is about to do the same to Hollywood. It’s great to be part of the changing future.” He was made “an offer I couldn’t refuse”.
That is the soulless, processed statement of a corporate head, and it exposes Gervais for what he has become, and perhaps always was: not a comedian, but a manager—now CEO—of Brand Gervais.
This role of comic “provocateur” was one with which Gervais happily played along to launch his US career. Why else would he have appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine dressed as Jesus with the word “atheist” scrawled across his chest?
But a CV of offensive comedy threatened to hamper his TV project Derek, in which he played a dim-witted retirement home worker. In an overhaul of the Gervais brand, the comedian decided in 2012 to remake himself as king of the “comedy of kindness”, a rebranding which worked so well that Gervais has earned a spot on the Independent on Sunday’s 2015 Happy List, for making the world a happier place.
Derek was billed as a mockumentary, akin to The Office. Yet Gervais assiduously denied any hint of mockery. Derek, he insisted, was about “kindness [being] more important than anything else”. Including comedy: without the “mock”, Derek was not offensive. But it was also not funny. As one TV critic succinctly summarised, it was “sub-Forrest Gump sympathy milking”.
By forgoing stand-up for film production, Gervais has turned his back on the spontaneity at the heart of comedy. Why is he producing the upcoming Netflix film Special Correspondents? Because “having shaken up the TV industry, Netflix is about to do the same to Hollywood. It’s great to be part of the changing future.” He was made “an offer I couldn’t refuse”.
That is the soulless, processed statement of a corporate head, and it exposes Gervais for what he has become, and perhaps always was: not a comedian, but a manager—now CEO—of Brand Gervais.
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