Alley Cats (Netflix)
Ricky Gervais, a well-known cat enthusiast, envisioned creating a unique animated series centered around his favorite animals. This wouldn’t be just any cartoon, but something that felt fresh and different.
Instead of sticking to the usual method of recording voiceovers in isolation, Gervais assembled his comedic friends for a more dynamic approach. They came together to improvise around the script, intentionally straying off course to capture genuine interactions and the spontaneity of their exchanges.
With up to 100 minutes of raw footage to work from, Gervais believed that if you couldn’t distill a brilliant 15 minutes from such talented comedians, then clearly, something was amiss. “If you can’t get a fantastic 15 minutes out of that with some of the best comedy minds in the country,” he noted, “then something’s gone wrong.”
And in this scenario, it seems, things didn’t quite go according to plan. Very much so.
There are six 15-minute episodes and, because it’s Gervais, I kept waiting for it to get funny. It’ll get funny any moment now, I told myself, encouragingly. It never did.
The style of animation is retro Hanna-Barbera (Scooby-Doo, Wacky Races, The Flintstones) but Alley Cats is not wholesome entertainment for all the family.
Alley Cats review: Something has gone very wrong with Ricky Gervais’ new animated series – it never gets funny! (L to R) David Earl as Puke, Jo Hartley as Kitten, Diane Morgan as Olive, Ricky Gervias as Gus, Andrew Brooke as Fang and Tom Basden as Ponce in the Netflix series
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Is Ricky Gervais pushing boundaries of comedy, or has he lost touch with what audiences find funny?
To those who will inevitably mistake it for wholesome family entertainment, good luck. The first ‘c-word’ appears at around the 90-second mark and from then it’s c-word, c-word, f-word, c-word, f-word, c-word… one word or the other is in every single line.
It is foul-mouthed not just way beyond necessity but to the point it becomes tediously repetitive. It could have been saved had it been funny. I repeat, just in case you weren’t paying attention earlier: it is not funny.
The main character (voiced by Gervais) is Gus, a feral orange tabby who looks the spit of Garfield, and maybe there is a joke in that? Even if there may not be much of a public appetite for an obscene Garfield?
But here he is, lounging on the sofa in a derelict house while watching telly with his mates.
They are: Fang (Andrew Brooke), Puke (David Earl), Ponce (Tom Basden) and, although there is Olive (Diane Morgan) and later Lara (Kerry Godliman), the female roles are secondary.
It has the feel of a thoroughly male endeavour. The first riff is a scatological one so crude and without wit a little something inside me died.
As the cats watch the telly, or mooch the streets, we get anal jokes, knob jokes, creepy jokes about sex with animals (fish, hedgehogs, penguins) and yet more scatological jokes. (I use ‘jokes’ in the loosest possible sense.)
There are also swipes at fat kids, the blind, even those with nut allergies. (‘How useless are you that you are going to die if a nut comes near you…’)
It’s transgression without comedic craft. It’s lazy that way and also lazy in that, when it comes to the inevitable moments which show Gervais has ‘heart’, it just repeats his well-known thoughts on grief and God and so on.
Alley Cats is foul-mouthed not just way beyond necessity but to the point it becomes tediously repetitive. It could have been saved had it been funny. I repeat: it is not funny
There is no coherent storyline although there is a lost little kitten who hangs out with the gang on the promise they’ll get her home.
This, ultimately, not only slips into sentimentality but also goes full cliché. It’s the ‘a-family-is-whom-you-choose-them-to-be’ one.
It feels as if the cast sat around in those riffing sessions trying to think up the worst things imaginable to say and just went with that, without bothering with any character work.
In fact, they aren’t even cats really. They don’t behave like cats. They could easily not be cats.
I was looking forward to a take on actual cats. A take on their haughty superiority, for instance. Or the way they lounge on the armchair for hours on end and then suddenly shoot from the room for no reason you can fathom. (My cat does that.)
Something did go very, very wrong here, alas.
Alley Cats is available to stream on Netflix