Ricky Gervais wants to make people cry as well as laugh
RICKY GERVAIS is a master at making us chuckle – but keep the tissues handy while watching his latest sitcom.
The man behind TV comedy hits The Office, Extras and Life's Too Short plans to tug at the old heartstrings with his bittersweet series Derek.
The Channel 4 six-parter, which begins tonight at 10pm, revolves around care home worker Derek Noakes — a nerdy fellow with learning difficulties, a pronounced underbite and a heart of gold.
"If I had to choose between laughter or tears, I'm probably prouder of making people well up in tears than laugh," says Ricky, who has written and directed the series as well as playing the lead role.
"It's easier to make people laugh than it is to make them cry — especially in a 23-minute TV show. People laugh at anything."
The mix of comedy and tragedy in Derek confused many people more used to Ricky's usual fare when the pilot show was broadcast last April.
Ricky admits: "After the pilot I got thousands of tweets saying, 'Is it a comedy or a drama?' because they laughed or they cried.
"And I said, 'Well, what is real life? Is it a comedy or drama?' There are funny bits and then you find a lump. I've always put in serious bits.
"Deep down The Office was a romantic comedy, but it was also about a middle-aged man having a breakdown. And Extras looked like it was a middle-class smart-ar*e swipe at celebrity, but it was actually about a group of friends."
I caught up with 51-year-old Ricky during a break from filming his latest movie, The Muppets... Again.
He has been putting in 12-hour days working on the sequel to last year's Oscar-winning The Muppets.
But at least the shoot is in Pinewood Studios, which is just a short drive from the north London home he shares with his partner of 21 years, TV producer Jane Fallon.
Beaming, he says: "I can't believe I'm doing The Muppets. It's an iconic franchise. The only downside is I'm not in charge, so I can't just finish early when I feel like it!"
Ricky does enjoy being at the helm, as he is with Derek.
Tonight's opening episode concerns a po-faced council pen-pusher who tries to close down the care home where Derek works.
And Ricky knows what he is talking about as "half my family are care workers".
The message is simple — we don't care very much about our old people.
But it also seems very political, something that Ricky denies.
He says: "It's not my job to make political points. I don't do politics with a big 'P'. I do human behaviour.
"What's different about Derek to my other stuff — and most other sitcoms — is there's a sincerity there that's usually associated with drama."
Speak no evil ... Ricky Gervais
Ricky Gervais, sincere? You can almost hear his critics cry: "Pull the other one."
To them, he is a smug wind-up merchant hell-bent on offending people to further inflate his out-of-control Hollywood ego.
True to form, the anti-Gervais brigade rounded on Derek even before the pilot was shown.
Ricky was accused of mocking the disabled and those with learning disabilities.
Comedian Stewart Lee tore into him on a Left-wing newspaper blog after watching some early Derek sketches online (Derek has been kicked around as a character by Ricky for 12 years).
He wrote: "Watching Gervais's Derek Noakes on YouTube, I imagined feral children trailing real Dereks around supermarkets, chanting 'Derek, Derek' — as they doubtless would were the series to be made — and wondered if discretion is not the better part of valour."
But then 3.2million people actually watched the pilot and most realised — as was Ricky's point — that Derek is a hero and someone to be celebrated because he is a better human being than we are.
Ricky explains: "The pilot was a non-broadcast pilot shot in three days. The reason why I said 'yes' to putting it out was because I was already getting criticised for it.
"People were saying it was cruel without even seeing it. So I put the pilot out and let them see it and get it all over with."
Derek is the person we would like to be, yet not like to be at the same time.
And the show is about how he and his mates — dedicated care worker Hannah (Kerry Godliman), downbeat janitor Dougie (Karl Pilkington) and sex-obsessed layabout Kev (David Earl) — battle against a cruel world. Ricky adds: "I wanted Derek to look like the people you see walking around and think, 'They're not interesting'.
"The train-spotters, the autograph hunters, the weird kid at school. The people you dismiss. But they've all got a story.
"I went to a school where there were people like Derek, Dougie, Kev and Hannah.
"There are more people like them in the world than there are the people who go to the Golden Globe awards. That's the truth.
"We're not all smart. Most people aren't going around saying brilliant lines all the time — 90 per cent of people in Britain aren't doing that."
Significantly, there are none of the A-list cameos that popped up in Extras and Life's Too Short.
Not even Z-listers such as Cheggers or "Barry From EastEnders" get a look in (don't worry, they're back for a Life's Too Short special, along with Warwick Davis).
Ricky reckons we could learn a lot from Derek's kind-heartedness. He sighs: "I wish I was more like Derek — as good as him. He is all of us at eight years old when we're not scared of what we say, when we're not scared of being uncool.
"Derek doesn't care. When he says, 'I love Stacey Solomon' he's not worried that we'll say, 'Really?'
"That's why Derek had to be odd-looking and scruffy and get things wrong. He had to be an outsider because I wanted kindness to come along and trump it all."
Of course, Ricky also manages to shoe-horn his long-running Twitter debate about the existence (or otherwise) of God into the series.
Derek sums up Ricky's feelings on the matter in the final episode, when he says: "I don't think it matters if there is a God or not. I've met people who believe in God that are good and that are bad.
"And I've met people who don't believe in God that are good and that are bad. So, just be good."
Doubtless there will still be some viewers who fail to grasp what Ricky is getting at with this show.
Derek is not an easy sitcom like Miranda. But neither is it as dark and sinister as it might be if it was to truly reflect some of the more outrageous aspects of the world it is set in.
No one could fail to have been sickened by the BBC's Panorama revelations about the brutal "care" being dished out at the now-closed Winterbourne View private hospital near Bristol.
Eleven people were sentenced for their part in what a judge called the "scandalous culture of cruelty" there. Ricky is clear where the line would be drawn for Derek.
No tears ... Ricky Geravis, left, meets The Sun's Colin Robertson
He says: "That sort of thing wouldn't work for Derek — it would ruin it. It would be like putting a rapist in Porridge or a spy in Bilko who goes to the gas chamber. It ruins the dynamic.
"It's not all about realism. It's not me trying to do a swipe at society. That's just the backdrop."
Ricky reckons the trick to his TV work is getting the balance right.
He wants you to laugh at his characters and the situations they end up in but he also wants you to feel something for them — and that can often be uncomfortable.
Ricky says: "My stuff is a tough watch. I know people who still watch The Office between their fingers and Extras is some of the most excruciating TV there is. Liam Neeson trying to do comedy in Life's Too Short was just gouge-your-eyes-out painful.
"It's like a workout. No one wants to go to the gym at seven o'clock. But they're pleased when they do."
And like that gym training you keep putting off, you have to stick with it when you finally take it on.
He believes that people are too quick to criticise his work because they do not watch the whole series.
Ricky sighs: "They see a couple of episodes and say, 'I didn't like that'. But you wouldn't stop reading a novel halfway through.
"Everything I've done is a trajectory — you don't just watch it in any order. That's why I only do six and 12 episodes. It's a finite story. People have got to give it a chance."
Ricky's rise to the top
RICKY'S CV includes everything from satire to award-winning sitcoms, movies and cartoon cameos. Here are the highlights.
The 11 O'Clock Show (1999).
Meet Ricky Gervais (2000).
The Office (2001-03): Won six Baftas, four British Comedy Awards, an Emmy and two Golden Globes.
Extras (2005-07): Won a Bafta, a British Comedy Award, an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
The Simpsons (2006 and again in 2011).
Night At The Museum (2006).
Stardust (2007).
Ghost Town (2009).
Night At The Museum 2 (2009).
Invention Of Lying (2009).
Sesame Street (2009).
An Idiot Abroad (2010).
Cemetery Junction (2010).
The Ricky Gervais Show (2010-12).
Life's Too Short (2011-12).
An Idiot Abroad 2 (2011).
Family Guy (2012).
An Idiot Abroad 3 (2012).
Derek (2012-13).
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