Ricky Gervais/Twitter/NetflixRicky Gervais has confirmed the second season of After Life will start filming next week.
The first season was a resounding success, with the show’s expert handling of tough subject matter striking a chord with audiences all around the world.
After Life’s first season followed Tony (Gervais) whose way of coping with life after the tragic death of his wife was to say and do whatever he wanted, and if it all got too much he thought he could take his own life and end his unhappiness.
We start filming #AfterLife2 next week & then I’m back on the road with #SuperNature. https://t.co/76NnbAK51Z
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) September 5, 2019
Streaming on Netflix, it had its fair share of absolutely heart-wrenching moments (Tony walking into the sea, for example).
But it’s Gervais’S pitch-perfect mixture of humour and humanity that made it such an effective look at the life of a widower.
Check out the trailer for the first season of After Life below:
Speaking of season two to Deadline, Gervais explained:
The second series of anything should be the best. You’ve put all your eggs into one basket, you think, but how well do you know someone after three hours? Right?
With a second series, you know who you’re writing for. You know what worked and what didn’t. It’s like having six goes at a pilot in the first series, so that first episode of Series 2 should be like f*cking hitting the ground running.
In May this year, Ricky Gervais took to Twitter to tell fans he’d finished the first draft of season two’s script. He wrote: ‘Writing is hard. Rewriting is fun. Drinking wine when you’ve just finished a first draft is fucking great.’
Writing is hard. Rewriting is fun. Drinking wine when you’ve just finished a first draft is fucking great. pic.twitter.com/7lZ5Zn0pmG
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) May 6, 2019
After the show received worldwide acclaim, Gervais admitted he was taken back by the positive response. He said: ‘You suddenly realise everyone is grieving but they don’t usually tell a stranger. I wasn’t expecting that, I didn’t think it was the most important thing about the show – for me it was a dramatic device to deliver jokes, drama.’
When asked whether Netflix had given him complete creative free-reign, Gervais said:
I’ve been lucky enough to always get final edit, I demanded it when I was a nobody with The Office and got it because it was low-risk and no one cared.
With Netflix, there’s freedom but you have to deliver. It’s not a charity, if you don’t deliver, they drop you.
NetflixWAY Widowed and Young’s Chief Executive Rebecca Cooper said that after the show was released, she received tons of messages asking her to watch it.
Cooper told UNILAD:
It was brutally honest, heartbreaking and hilarious – all at the same time.
Many of our charity’s members have said that the script is a searingly accurate reflection of what it’s like to be widowed at a young age.
It’s not an easy watch but we hope it will help people to understand the challenges facing people who’ve been widowed young – and that it will help young widows and widowers to reach out to others and find peer support through charities like WAY Widowed and Young.
After Life‘s second season is due to be released on Netflix sometime in 2020.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.