Ricky Gervais

Another view on Life's Too Short

Ricky Gervais's new comedy isn't just in poor taste, it's blatantly offensive, says Kristina Gray.

Ricky Gervais to host Golden Globes for third time

Comedian Ricky Gervais is to host the Golden Globes for the third time, despite causing controversy in the role earlier this year.

The clout of Ricky Gervais never ceases to amaze. Not only can he get away with insulting Johnny Depp at the Golden Globes, now he's got him guest starring in his new series.

Depp, who appears as an odious version of himself, is brilliantly appalling as he employs Warwick Davis to coach him for a part where he plays Rumpelstiltskin.

The gag in this series is how everyone thinks it's OK to treat Davis badly as he's small.

Watching Johnny Depp play the recorder while Davis has to ­Riverdance is off the comedy Richter scale. But there's worse at a sci-fi ­convention, where Davis is quizzed by a crass reporter.

Even though these scenes are made up, I bet they're ­exaggerated versions of situations Davis has encountered.

But we could have done without his own tasteless best man speech. This works best when the joke is on everyone else, not him.

Backlash against return for Gervais and his 'insults'

Ricky Gervais is returning as the host of the Golden Globes but 25 per cent of members voted against having him back as host.

This time around, co-writer Ricky Gervais has his 3ft 6in protagonist Warwick Davies involved in an excruciating improv session with Johnny Depp - before turning the humour on to himself. When Depp turns up in Gervais's office, he jokes how the comedian came off Twitter because it had 140 characters... '139 more than he has ever managed to come up with' - a cracking piece of self-reflexive comedy that's all too aware of the ghost of David Brent hanging over it. The formula ain't fresh, but it still raises plenty of bold, daring laughs.

Warwick Davis and Karl Pilkington plan travel show

Life's Too Short star Warwick Davis is in talks with Ricky Gervais and Karl over a new travel show, dubbed The Short Way Round.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant only appear briefly, but their stamp is all over this sitcom, with Warwick Davis as the showbiz dwarf who is essentially Gervais by proxy, and his worse than useless female assistant in the Merchant role. The humour is progressive - where else would Davis get a leading role like this? - yet too constantly fixated on height for jokes. Tonight, Davis wangles work both as a consultant to Johnny Depp and a guest gig at a wedding, but the centrepiece of this episode is embittered, fragile Depp's showdown with Gervais in his office, vengeance for the roasting he got at the Golden Globes.

Belly laughs and cringe-making moments vie for supremacy in the second episode of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's painfully funny new comedy. As dwarf star Warwick Davis attempts to get his career off the ground again, a request from Johnny Depp for advice on how to play Rumpelstiltskin in a new film project looks like the break he's been waiting for. But he hasn't reckoned on the actor finding out about his friendship with Gervais - who singled Depp's flop The Tourist out for special mention during his scathing hosting of the 2011 Golden Globe awards.

Obviously, The Office was brilliant. Still is. Even now, I'll stumble across a repeat - the night out at the disco! Bacardi Breezers £1, Wonderbras get in free! Gareth leaving in a sidecar for a threesome! - and before I know it I'll have watched the lot, again.

Fawlty Towers is the only other show which has that effect.

Some people preferred Extras, reckoning it to be sweeter because of the Andy-Maggie relationship, but for a long time I thought Ricky Gervais was just showing off with cruel put-downs and star walk-ons in a lazily showbizzy setting. The last episode, though, was brilliant on the nature of fame - sweet ending, too. Nevertheless, I seemed to have cooled on the idea of the main man as Ricky Genius (notwithstanding Stephen Merchant's contribution). So, as he got louder and ruder, did a few others. Thus, in advance of Life's Too Short, Gervais was issuing the challenge: "Bring on the haters."

Because Extras won me over, sort of, I'm loath to criticise this after one half-hour. But it has to be said that, uninspiringly, we're back in the biz (Warwick Davis, the lead, plays himself as an actor running a theatrical agency). That Gervais also plays himself, smirkingly, in a plush office, where he does that Brentian double-take for the docusoap camera underneath a giant Extras poster. That Davis is really playing another version of Gervais. Oh, and did I mention he's a dwarf?

Some, though not all, of the jokes were to do with height or lack thereof. Did I laugh when Davis fell out of his high-sided 4x4? Yes I did. He's a role model for dwarves, he says, who's trying to improve their, er, standing in the world and in this he feels a bit like Martin Luther King. "You say a dwarf wasn't taken from his homeland, chained and whipped and forced to change his name - no, maybe not, but then I've never seen a black man fired from a cannon."

Liam Neeson, also playing himself, hustled Gervais and Merchant, also playing himself, for stand-up work and was perceived to be even more berkish. Suddenly Davis' size was no longer the issue, he'd completely blended in, and maybe this is Life's Too Short's honourable intention. But it still feels like a safe, easy show. A safe show about the vertically challenged (with supplementary Aids and cancer gags)? How very Ricky Gervais, you might say, but on this evidence it isn't going to be the funniest series about a self-referencing comedy double act which sends up Liam Neeson. That award has already been claimed by The Trip. I'll love The Office for ever, though, so I'll never be a hater. I'm just, like Gareth after his health & safety demo failed to wow the Wernham Hogg sexpot, disappointed.