Derek

[Happy Face 29]

Channel 4 now

 

The irony of all the attacks on Ricky Gervais for daring to make a comedy about a mentally challenged bloke is that they are motored by some deep prejudices of their own. The Gervais-bashers going mental over his new sitcom Derek, having previously gone mental over his use of the word “mong”, pose as well-meaning defenders of disabled people. But actually their anti-Ricky ranting is driven by fear of everyday TV-viewing folk, who are presumed to be so suggestible that one new sitcom about a man with a low IQ will be enough to unleash their deep-seated hate for disabled people.

 

Derek, which premieres tonight on Channel 4, features Gervais in the title role, a sort of super-nerdy loser who is obsessed with collecting autographs. Gervais insists the character is not mentally handicapped, pointing out that "he's cleverer than Father Dougal [from Father Ted] and not [that] different to Mr Bean". But his critics aren't convinced. They think Derek is at the very least autistic and that inviting viewers to laugh at such an unfortunate character is a very bad thing. Why? Because apparently it will stoke the general public's already existing "contempt" for anyone with a disability.

 

Virtually every anti-Gervais commentary is built on the assumption that there is a mob of people out there – Them, of course, not Us – whose dormant anti-disabled bigotry will be reawakened by this evil new sitcom. A Guardian writer says the show will "feed bigots" and even hints at a link between the cruel humour of the likes of Gervais and the claim that there has been "a 75% rise in disability hate crime" – as if comedy leads directly to kickings, by coaxing viewers to act on their inner hate.

 

The comedian Stewart Lee is worried that we will soon see "feral children trailing real Dereks around supermarkets, chanting 'Derek, Derek'" –which, for all its disability-sympathising PC-ness, is only an updated version of the sort of media-effects theories once promoted by Mary Whitehouse. She, too, was constantly panicked by the possibility that edgy or depraved TV shows would corrupt children – Their children, of course, not Ours – and make them even more feral than they were.

 

The panic about Derek and the impact it will have on uncouth TV viewers echoes the fury that greeted Gervais's use of the word "mong" last year. When he tweeted that word a few times, the reaction was so hysterical you could have been forgiven for thinking he had gone out and actually beaten up a disabled person. Commentators accused him of inflaming “bigotry and ignorance around disability” and of stirring up “extreme, open contempt for disabled people”, as if the public is such a seething pit of anti-disabled sentiment that a 140-character comment by a comedian might be enough to turn us into a hateful horde. A columnist for the Observer even suggested that Gervais was contributing to a climate of anti-disabled prejudice not seen since Nazi Germany. There were campaigns to "stop" Gervais from using the m-word.

 

But where are all these haters of disabled people? Where is this "extreme, open contempt" for the disabled, this festering "bigotry and ignorance"? These things exist largely in the caliginous minds of the chattering classes, who fancy, on the basis of no serious evidence, that the ruffians out there, the kind of people who don't have newspaper columns, are consumed by a frenzied fear and loathing of disabled people. Ironically, in attacking Gervais for being prejudiced, they reveal their own prejudices, their fear of the easily goaded febrile throng, who are just assumed to be less tolerant and loving than Us. Believe it or not, your average bloke and his wife and kids (even the feral ones) do not make a habit of chasing disabled people through the street shouting "retard!" That is a figment of opinion-formers' imaginations.

 

The censorious instinct (and yes, there is an implicitly censorious desire in all the Gervais-bashing, a desire to prevent him from making certain jokes) is always underpinned by prejudice. It is always driven by the snobbish fear that if a certain section of society claps eyes upon a saucy image or overhears an offensive word, then it will be driven mad with lust or hate and will do something crazy. Just as feminists fret that sexist t-shirts will lead to domestic violence and anti-fascist groups believe that if the BNP appears on TV then there will be an outburst of racist violence, so the Gervais-haters fantasise that Derek will unleash widespread loathing of disabled folk. But people aren't monkeys, who see and then do. What we have here is an updated version of the elitist question that was posed at the Lady Chatterley trial, with commentators effectively saying: "Would you let an average, uneducated man watch this sitcom?"

[Brock Manson 0]

Watching this on 4od at some stage, it looks great. Caught him sitting on the crumble though.

 

Loved Extras, absolutely brilliantly written and cast. Was never a fan of the Office but I have a lot of time for Gervais' material in general; he's not afraid to just write stuff that's funny - he's not some raving bigoted twat nor is he a 'safe' comedian the likes of which the BBC force upon us.

 

That's what comedy's about for me, something that actually makes me laugh. There's precious little comedians who manage to do so anymore that haven't popped their clogs.

[Tooj 17]

No mention of Life's Too Short Brock?

[Idioteque 0]

Poo.

[Brock Manson 0]

No mention of Life's Too Short Brock?

 

I liked that too! Extras has been his best series though.

[Happy Face 29]

precious little comedy in it, but still brilliant Iyam.

[Meenzer 15561]

The comedian Stewart Lee is worried that we will soon see "feral children trailing real Dereks around supermarkets, chanting 'Derek, Derek'" –which, for all its disability-sympathising PC-ness, is only an updated version of the sort of media-effects theories once promoted by Mary Whitehouse.

 

Or the words of someone who remembers Joey Deacon.

[Kevin S. Assilleekunt 1]

Gone off Gervais. He keeps going on Piers Morgan's CNN show and he has yet to physically attack him, an unforgivable moral lapse imo.

[Davey Dave 0]

Gervais' gurning put me off a bit. Other than that, not bad.

[ChezGiven 0]

Loved it when she headbutted the horrible cow in the pub. I thought it just about worked, i read somewhere that he had expressed his hate for autograph hunters so the fact that Derek collects them meant the show was hateful. Having watched it, there was no hate in it at all and addressed 2 enormously difficult subjects, old age and care for the elderly on one side and people on the fringes of society on the other. it was genuinely sad when Joan died and thats not bad in 30 mins of TV. I think he may have confused the mong-gate campaigners. Maybe thats part of what he was meant to be saying, people rush to claim moral outrage without understanding the moral values they claim to uphold.

[ewerk 30673]

I watched the first ten minutes and couldn't find a reason to continue watching. Especially when Celebrity Juice was on at the same time.

[Ayatollah Hermione 13894]

Life's Too Short was fucking dreadful but this is clearly a different tone and approach all together. Will report back as I'm sure you're all desparate to hear my opinion.

[Kid Dynamite 7034]

Fucking hopeless. The office was genuinely funny, well observed comedy. Derek was on a par with that shite made updated sitcom in extras.

[Happy Face 29]

Gervais' gurning put me off a bit. Other than that, not bad.

 

He had me close to tears when he was crying about Joan.

[Davey Dave 0]

Tropic Thunder.

[Dr Gloom 21965]

I've gone off Gervais since the office and extras. He's lost the art of observational comedy. All his humour now is based on making fun of people. That's all well and good when he's ridiculing himself, or celebrities, but seems bad taste when the joke's on people with disabilities.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Dr Gloom

[Dr Gloom 21965]

And don't get my started on his laugh

[Happy Face 29]

I thought Life's Too Short was total gash by the way. Dressing a dwarf in a shit Ewok outfit, making him climb a bookcase or standing him in a toilet and laughing at him. None of it rang true as events that would happen to a real person and the character was nothing more than an object of ridicule.

 

Derek was much better observed, a totally believable and loveable character with a total lack of social skills....a bit like David Brent.

[Happy Face 29]

I've gone off Gervais since the office and extras. He's lost the art of observational comedy. All his humour now is based on making fun of people. That's all well and good when he's ridiculing himself, or celebrities, but seems bad taste when the joke's on people with disabilities.

 

Disabled people can be arseholes too.

 

Some of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes take the piss out of characters that happen to be disabled and the situations they find themselves in, though not the disability...which is where I thought Life's Too short went wrong. Not that I found LTS offensive, it just wasn't funny.

[Happy Face 29]

For the past few days, opprobrium has rained down upon the head of Ricky Gervais for daring to make Derek, a comedy drama pilot for Channel 4, in which he plays a learning disabled man who works at an old people’s home.

 

It appears on the surface as if Gervais has picked on one of society’s most vulnerable individuals. Derek is presented as of low mental acuity, with impaired language skills and a facial mannerism. He also has an unrealisable crush on the home’s duty nurse Hannah (Kerry Godliman) – “I’m probably going to marry her.”

 

Gervais would certainly be aware of the danger of setting up Derek as a figure of fun. Born in 1960, the comedian would have been 14 when the Horizon documentary Joey, about cerebral palsy sufferer Joey Deacon appeared on TV. Deacon, who had spent most of his life in an institution, despite being of normal intelligence, was able to become a published author. But, after a Blue Peter appearance in 1981, his mannerisms and speech difficulties became widely mocked and imitated.

 

Gervais has made a career out of testing the boundaries of what is and isn’t okay to laugh at. From David Brent’s unthinking racism in The Office to Clive Owen’s misogyny in Extras (“If I’d just slept with that, I wouldn’t throw the food on the floor, I’d throw it in her face”), Gervais specialises in confronting us with situations that are at once appalling and very funny – cringe comedy, as it is sometimes known.

 

But in Derek, Gervais seems to have found a character that he relates to deeply. When Derek found a worm, tried to give it a drink in the pond in the garden of the nursing home, and wondered, in his child-like speech: “Is that its head? I give it both ends,” it simply didn’t come across as mocking. It was a way of looking at the world that was both joyful and touching. And, when Derek's favourite resident Joan fell asleep, and he touched her curls gently: “I likes her hair, it’s fluffy,” you could almost feel the perm bounce against your fingers.

 

Once again, Gervais employed a fake documentary format, allowing Derek to describe his world view directly to camera, inter-cutting it with scenes from the home. Derek’s philosophy – “I likes old people, they’re kind and they’re not going to be around forever so be nice to them” – was contrasted with that of the morose caretaker Douglas (Karl Pilkington), who viewed the home’s residents with gloom: “I don’t know at what point you can say life’s ended.”

 

In Hannah, Gervais had also created another of his sympathetic female characters (the most underrated aspect of his writing), who are aware that life is not quite working out as they might have hoped – “I’m not in a relationship, not married” – but remain pragmatic and cheerful.

 

When, later in the episode, Joan died, Derek remembered her saying: “Kindness is magic Derek.” Just writing that seems to have worked a strange spell on Gervais. Derek was, at its heart, nothing if not kind.

[Dr Gloom 21965]

I've gone off Gervais since the office and extras. He's lost the art of observational comedy. All his humour now is based on making fun of people. That's all well and good when he's ridiculing himself, or celebrities, but seems bad taste when the joke's on people with disabilities.

 

Disabled people can be arseholes too.

 

Some of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes take the piss out of characters that happen to be disabled and the situations they find themselves in, though not the disability...which is where I thought Life's Too short went wrong. Not that I found LTS offensive, it just wasn't funny.

 

curb does those things without it feeling nasty though.

[Gemmill 44995]

Life's Too Short was shite. Dwarfs ARE funny though. When I worked in Bliss in town, we used to get one in there, and the little fucker used to get absolutely mortal. He couldn't walk too good at the best of times, but when he was pissed he was rubbish at it.

 

One or two steps became like Everest for him to go either up or down and when he fell over he couldn't get back up again.

[Happy Face 29]

I've gone off Gervais since the office and extras. He's lost the art of observational comedy. All his humour now is based on making fun of people. That's all well and good when he's ridiculing himself, or celebrities, but seems bad taste when the joke's on people with disabilities.

 

Disabled people can be arseholes too.

 

Some of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes take the piss out of characters that happen to be disabled and the situations they find themselves in, though not the disability...which is where I thought Life's Too short went wrong. Not that I found LTS offensive, it just wasn't funny.

 

curb does those things without it feeling nasty though.

 

So did Derek.

 

EDIT: not that he's even a disabled character.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Happy Face

[Brock Manson 0]

I've gone off Gervais since the office and extras. He's lost the art of observational comedy. All his humour now is based on making fun of people. That's all well and good when he's ridiculing himself, or celebrities, but seems bad taste when the joke's on people with disabilities.

 

Disabled people can be arseholes too.

 

Some of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes take the piss out of characters that happen to be disabled and the situations they find themselves in, though not the disability...which is where I thought Life's Too short went wrong. Not that I found LTS offensive, it just wasn't funny.

 

curb does those things without it feeling nasty though.

 

Wendy in the closet wasn't nasty? Hilarious episode but just as offensive as LTS.

[TicTacWoe 0]

For me, the main reason LTS didn't work was that the Gervais character/persona of The Office and Extras was transferred to Warwick Davis rather than just being Gervais himself. Davis seems like a decent actor but I just couldn't find him remotely convincing in the LTS role. It was also covering too much old ground but I think it could have done that and still been funny, which for the most part it wasn't.

 

Haven't seen Derek yet and wasn't very enthusiastic about it after seeing the advert but will give it a go. Sounds a bit different from his usual format at least.