After Life (Netflix) season 3

Ricky Gervais broke his two season limit rule to create this third outing for grieving widower Tony. Season two was rather too neatly wrapped up, with seemingly a happy ending for everyone. Season three shows that real life is, of course, not like that. Tony has not progressed his relationship with Emma as he has not found a way to both keep loving his wife and move on from her death. As he moves glacially through the stages of grief, he becomes slightly less of a prick to those around him, so that’s progress of a kind. For all its thoughtful and poignant moments, there is a lack of balance in this series that tips it over the edge of worth extending. The female characters barely appear until the last few episodes; they are treated as peripheral and their concerns an afterthought. In contrast the crude misogyny of a middle-aged incel features far too heavily and is unfunny and at times, stomach-churning. Gervais has always included an element of naughty-boy transgression in his work, the horrendous psychiatrist embodies this in series one, but in his late middle age the trope is getting tedious and overdone. Roxy the sex worker doesn’t appear at all in series three, but we have to hear all about her boyfriend’s misery about her profession. So was it worth breaking the two-season rule? On balance, probably not.