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After Life (2019)

2019 · Comedy,Drama · contemporary-realistic, family-relational

After Life poster

After Life is a British comedy-drama created by and starring Ricky Gervais as Tony, a newspaper journalist whose wife has died of cancer, leaving him suicidal, caustic, and adrift. The show's signature achievement is holding genuine comedy and devastating grief in simultaneous tension — reviewers consistently report laughing and crying within the same scene. It is quiet in scale but enormous in emotional ambition, structured around a single character's slow, reluctant re-engagement with life, animated by an unusually warm ensemble of supporting characters. It functions as a grief memoir in disguise, and attracts viewers who are themselves bereaved or depressed and find in it a precise articulation of feelings they could not otherwise voice.

From the reviewers

I'd rather be nowhere with her than somewhere without her
The portrayal of grief and depression I found to be very relatable, the story was told very realistically and the cast were brilliant.
I'm having to do Season 2 on my own as my wife's three year struggle with cancer recently ended. I find his detailed understanding of the grief amazingly accurate. Tony's pain seeps through the screen.
An almost unbelievable mix of beauty, sadness, and laughs. The characters are well cast and have great chemistry. The premise is heartbreaking but so many beautiful moments happen, you can almost forget.
It is 6 episodes of the most beautifully crafted television on a subject matter that has no right to be this funny. However, the humour is always tinged with sadness (and vice versa) and the balance between the two is perfect.

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