After Life Season 1 Review

March 8, 2019 at 7:53pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a Netflix Original Series about one guy that doesn't care for living since his wife died. She had cancer, and you get to see glimpses of their life together in various videos that the lead Tony (Ricky Gervais) watches. These segments are shown throughout the season and somewhat give context into certain elements of what he's experiencing.

He's essentially given up on life since she's been gone and only their dog is keeping him going at tempting moments. It's a rather short season, which does somewhat feel stretched thin with the material they went with. It's basically a movie almost featuring a full arc of one dealing with grief and loneliness. So in general Tony has decided he just doesn't care about the world, he definitely doesn't like the people within it. This makes him lash out at others and just speak his mind.

These parts are funny at times, but it gets rather boring as he starts to warm. That element of dealing with things comes across as sorrowing, with a good performance. It just became incredibly boring and slow. There didn't seem to be much aside from the overal pre-determined goal and it was so predictable from the start. Again, solid emotional elements with a weird cast. It just sort of went by and I won't think much of it going forward.

The show actually has a great cast, it doesn't really use everyone though. There's no side focus, little development for others and it's just centered around Gervais. You get glimpses at what others are doing, but it doesn't matter and perhaps it shouldn't. It just would have been nice to see that the others mattered at all, they were just there to bump him along.

They had a large group of people that were close to him, but just there in presence for the most part. Not a whole lot goes on, there's no overall mission or levels of excitement. Mostly just a guy sulking around and whining about wanting to die. That's honestly what it was, there's a build in a different direction and you'll see that has time goes by. That shift feels somewhat sudden, despite it being what I'd consider a core theme throughout the season.

The Conclusion

After Life Season 1 comes across as boring, with moments of great jokes and it just brightens up too much. I wanted to see a darker journey, which it seemed to be at the start. It felt as though this season meandered around and then all of a sudden turned towards a sense of recovery. It was dark, but never went all the way. It was just a guy that wanted to be mean, had the potential to be, and just couldn't be.

There's a solid supporting cast here, they're not used to their full potential. Gervais performed well though there wasn't much going on for him to be doing. It's also very narrow in focus and by the end, I'm just generally content with it being finished it. It just didn't seem to be a very powerful, or stand out experience once I reached the end. Fairly fast watch in terms of time, somewhat boring to sit through however.

After Life Season 1 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing

Rating Overall: 5.4