Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's latest collaboration, now playing on HBO Canada, is probably the edgiest, possibly the funniest, and certainly the broadest thing they've ever done.
In Life's Too Short, they build on the celebrity-self-flagellation of Extras and the cringe-inducing political incorrectness of The Office, adding to the mix what is perhaps the final frontier of socially-accepted prejudice: a "little person", self-portrayed by actor Warwick Davis (who often introduces himself in the show as "star of such films as Willow").
Davis' character is mocked by passersby for not being able to reach a doorbell, is used by Johnny Depp as a character study, hops into chairs, falls out of cars, climbs a bookshelf like a ladder, is dressed up as an elf, stands in for a child actor, gets stuck in a toilet, is constantly left hung out to dry by his slack-jawed secretary (played with brilliance by Rosamund Hanson), and is humiliated in almost every other imaginable way. The extent to which he "takes one for the team" in this show makes his performance incredibly brave.
What makes it funny is that his character is such an egomaniac--every bit as vain and self-aggrandizing as an actor twice his size. No matter how much the world puts him down, he never comes across as pathetic. The byproduct of this is that you really do begin to see the world through his eyes; even in this broadest of comedies there hides a very smart, on-the-mark commentary. Things like "dwarf-tossing" do actually exist in this world; should we really be vilifying people like Gervais and Merchant for making a comedy with a little person as its lead?
This show will surely alienate the uptight viewer (even I sometimes wonder while I'm watching whether I should really be laughing at this). Regardless, I definitely recommend checking it out; after all, life is too short to take ourselves too seriously.
Life's Too Short airs on HBO Canada Sundays at 10:30 pm, after Eastbound and Down.
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