The latest mockumentary from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant tells a fictional version of the life of actor Warwick Davis, a little person whose biggest roles includes the lead in Willow and playing an Ewok in Return of the Jedi. It’s another exploration of failure and disappointment with a central character who is not particularly likeable.
Life’s Too Short focuses again around the world of acting so it gives Ricky a chance to call in his celebrity friends and on first viewing last night it was pretty good in spots in a sort of ‘you know what you’re getting way’.
Warwick (that is fake Warkick) has been living off past glories for many years and is staring economic meltdown in the face due to the accountant (and friend) from hell. And so he turns to a documentary film crew to try to kick-start his career and help his agency for little people.
Warwick is cocky, brazen and plain embarrassing and quickly emerges as a character everyone loves to hate. Does this remind you of anyone? Yup it’s David Brent. Gervais managed to pull this character off in The Office but will Warwick be able to perform the same trick? Definitely there were some laugh out loud moments last night with Warwick claiming his independence and then falling out of his 4x4 seconds later.
Let’s hope though that episode one gets all of the size jokes out of the way as there needs to be more to this series than that. Are we laughing at jokes about the central character’s size or are we laughing at the character himself? Because, like Brent, he seems to be an interesting one. Gervais enjoys a bit of controversy but what he does do well is create character types although he does seem to have a habit of repeating himself and there are definitely signs of that here again.
Gervais and Merchant have proved that they can drum up a good cameo or two with Liam Neeson happily taking the mick out of himself with his hilarious role-play on Aids in Merchant and Gervais’ office. And with the promise of Sting, and Johnny Depp to come, we’ll be sticking around to see where this goes.
It was a promising first episode and we will definitely be tuning in fore more.
Sarah Carthy
