Life's Too Short

Gervais's Life's Too Short faces an uncertain future

BBC2 mockumentary about a dwarf, starring Warwick Davis, ended run with 1.2 million viewers and divided television critics.

Life's Too Short up for Rose d'Or award

Ricky Gervais comedy Life's Too Short is up against Channel 4's Friday Night Dinner for the best sitcom prize at this year's Rose d'Or TV awards.

Life's Too Short gets critical mauling in America

Life's Too Short received its American premiere on HBO last night, and was met with an underwhelming response from the critics.

Life's Too Short: Aggressively unfunny comedy failure

There's something sour and awful about Ricky Gervais' comedy these days. He used to be a sly, cheeky observer of human behavior, but his current status as a smug, self-absorbed blowhard finds its clearest expression in his new HBO show, Life's Too Short.

Ricky Gervais on fame

I've always been fascinated by the subject of fame. Probably because I've never really understood it. Or rather, I've never really understood why people would put fame above all else.

Stephen Merchant 'too exhausted' to write second series

Stephen Merchant, who co-wrote The Office and Extras with Ricky Gervais, has admitted that he thinks he will struggle to pen the second series of Life's Too Short, as he is too tired.

The sitcom that appears to prove The Office's Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are creatively bankrupt, Life's Too Short distilled everything they've done before (a mockumentary format poking fun at a disabled character, with meta-jokes and celebrity cameos) but did nothing new or interesting with those ingredients. For half the seven episodes, it didn't even feel like a Warwick Davis-starring sitcom, as so much was an excuse to shoehorn in Gervais, Merchant and a guest-star-of-the-week. Things improved slightly for the last three episodes, once the storyline with Warwick's divorce became a bigger focus, but my goodwill was exhausted by then. It just wasn't insightful or clever, as everything here had been done better in Extras, and poor Warwick was forced to play himself-doing-a-David-Brent impersonation. A sore disappointment from two writers who used to demand only the best, but are now happy to devise stupid shows for their friends (see also Karl Pilkington's An Idiot Abroad).

Yes, Life's Too Short was covering old ground. Yes, it's use of celebrity cameos was lazy. Yes, it was gratuitously controversial. Yes, the physical humiliations visited on Warwick Davis became tiresome. But it was frequently very funny, beautifully performed and Davis emerged as a charismatic and engaging comedy actor. If nothing else, Life's Too Short gave an authentic starring role to a dwarf actor for the first time since... well, Willow.

Ricky Gervais moving to C4 after Life's Too Short flops

Ricky Gervais is poised to join Channel 4 after his latest BBC show Life's Too Short flopped.

Life's Too Short's finale was too little, too late

Life's Too Short's final episode was its strongest as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant cracked out some good gags and Warwick Davis' life slowly unravelled. But is it all too little, too late?