Ricky Gervais

So sentimental is the final episode of Ricky Gervais's care home-set comedy that it's easy to think the whole thing is spoofing itself. The death of elderly resident Lizzie turns the team at Broad Hill introspective and we get their soundbite views on God and the meaning of life. Occasional moments of humour (mostly from Karl Pilkington's put-upon Dougie) are outweighed by cloying cod philosophising. To top it all, a maudlin reunion between Derek and his dad, an alcoholic, is sound-tracked by crashing chords from Coldplay. Channel 4, meanwhile, announced this week that there will be a second series.

Ricky Gervais has courted controversy with his series about a retirement-home worker with learning difficulties. In tonight's episode Broadhill retirement home wants to host a cabaret show and Derek (Gervais) forms an entertainment committee to discuss plans for the evening. Meanwhile, a would-be rapper is on community service at the home. This is followed at 10.35pm by The Making of Derek, in which Gervais and his cast mates Karl Pilkington, Kerry Godliman and David Earl, explain why they made the series. At one point, Gervais becomes quite metaphysical about the whole thing: "The Office touched on existentialism but it touched on the existentialism of being 30. Derek touches on the existentialism of being 90."

Derek and the enigma of Ricky Gervais

Just when I think I've got Ricky Gervais figured out, he undertakes a new project that turns my preconceptions on their head.

Opinion: Hang on, Derek is very good after all

When Derek started on Channel 4 a month ago I was fairly indifferent to it. After the controversial one-off last year and the disappointingly broad Life's Too Short it looked as if Ricky Gervais had maybe mislaid his mojo. Four episodes in, however, I'm wondering if he has found it again.

Comedy gold: Stephen Merchant's Hello Ladies

Away from the shadow of Ricky Gervais, Merchant tackles awkward preconceptions of his comedy skills head on - and is all the funnier for it.

It's around the time that Coldplay's Paradise is used to soundtrack some guileless hi-jinks on a beach that we seriously start to wonder. Might Derek actually be a spoof, a subtle piss-take of the 'big-hearted', 'down to earth' comedy drama? Because the alternative is too grisly to contemplate.

Derek is so flimsy, it's in danger of floating away on the next light breeze. The music manipulates the emotions shamelessly. Character development is ignored in favour of clunky pieces-to-camera during which we're reminded that yes, Hannah is very kind and yes, Derek is very well-meaning. Meanwhile, the plotting is little more than a delivery mechanism for the kind of moral lessons that Jackanory might have rejected as a touch simple-minded. An increasingly baffling affair - we can't wait for Ricky Gervais's triumphant reveal in ten years time.

I could be wrong but I think the message Ricky Gervais wants us to take away from this episode is that selfishness is a bad thing. It's a sentiment rammed home in every other scene and backed up with nuclear levels of Coldplay. As the old folk go for a trip to the seaside, sweet, selfless Hannah stays behind, because someone has to help a new resident settle in. Then the week's glaring baddie hoves into view as a snooty relative (a former schoolmate of Hannah) daring to sneer at her job.

Would anyone, however self-centred, walk into a care home and sneer at the staff for being failures? Luckily, there are better helpings of comedy at the beach.

There are some lovely moments in Ricky Gervais's gently observed comedy tonight as Derek (Gervais) and the residents of Broad Hill nursing home enjoy a day trip to the seaside with the compliments of the long-suffering Dougie (Karl Pilkington). While they are away attention turns to soft-hearted care assistant Hannah (Kerry Godliman), forced to reconsider her own achievements when an old, and far more successful, schoolmate turns up at the home to her relegate her mother to the sidelines of her life.