Gervais' Derek Fixes 'Dramedy' 24 Minutes at a Time.

Ordinarily I save all opinion and pop culture pieces for I Hardly See You Anymore, but today I'm making an exception, for the pilot of the new Ricky Gervais show Derek.  Ricky Gervais is one of the most famous and outspoken British comedians of the last several decades, amassing a global fan base in the millions.  Just some of his claims to fame include co-creating the original UK series The Office, his critically-acclaimed podcast series with cohorts Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington and the wildly successful shows An Idiot Abroad, Extras and Life's Too Short and films Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying.

Admittedly, it took me a few minutes to get a good grip on Ricky Gervais' Derek, and I'll tell you why.  Gervais' most high-profile work for many has been his production of the mockumentary The Office, which brought audiences our ongoing love/hate relationship with his character David Brent.  Brent would bounce back and forth from hysterical to despicably self-centered - if not both - at the blink of an eye.  So I reserved judgment on his titular character Derek for several minutes as I gauged just how Gervais - who also wrote and directed the pilot - was playing him.  Derek is a refreshingly well-meaning, albeit a bit simple at times, attendant at a nursing home.  He loves his residents and takes care of them without reserve, the way so many younger family members these days won't - but more on that later.  Derek holds their hands while they nap, plays their numbers at the lottery, walks them outside to the home's garden and more.  It's this compassion and benevolence that makes his very occasional self-centered moments hilarious, such as wanting to watch his favorite television shows on the day room's set instead of a resident's, or making sure his dessert is as big as everyone else's when it's offered.

The presence of Gervais' longtime friend Karl Pilkington, who Gervais relentlessly skewers for his sourpuss attitude on HBO's The Ricky Gervais Show and Sky1's An Idiot Abroad, also had me wondering if their relationship in Derek would correlate with their apparent real-life friendship.  Fortunately, while Pilkington's nailed-to-the-ground pragmatism makes the cut for his character Douglas, the near-bullying that makes the pair famous is almost reversed.  While Derek does annoy Douglas in a hilarious bus scene I won't spoil for you here, the overall feel between them is that Douglas is the cynic and Derek is the sweetheart.  At one point Douglas, a handyman, answers a call about a broken picture in a resident's room.  He promises to take care of it and try to fix it, but as soon as he's (marginally) out of her earshot with the picture, he whispers, frustrated, to the camera.  "It's just shit.  That's all they do with these rooms is fill 'em with shit."

Head nurse Hannah is also a joy to watch.   She's been at the home for 15 years and faces the familiar problem that her work overtakes her chance for a social life.  Played pitch-perfect by Kerry Godliman, Hannah is the caring-but-healthily-detached mother of the makeshift family made up of herself, the almost absurdly compassionate Derek and jaded Douglas.  Although I've only seen the pilot, I have the feeling she'll wind up playing referee between Derek and Douglas from time to time.

This mixture of worldviews on elderly care is also an unapologetic send-up of first-world health care and our attitude towards our seniors.  I've long felt that The Office is a searing reminder that authority (in business, primarily) does not always equal intelligence and responsible leadership.  An Idiot Abroad, a travel documentary in which Gervais and podcast co-host (and Office co-creator) Stephen Merchant send Karl Pilkington to exotic places around the world, serves as a great example of why not to take our beautiful and diverse planet for granted.  Karl is taken out of his comfort zone at every turn, and often dragged kicking and screaming from one grand adventure to the next, because he has said himself that he'd just rather stay home. Gervais was giddy with the accompaniment of actor Warwick Davis to Karl's misadventures in Idiot's third season because his "gung-ho" attitude just bothers Karl more.  We learn in every episode that it's good for Karl to have these experiences, that variety is the spice of life, as cliche a phrase as that may be.  Derek, then, is a look in the mirror at what we do with our elders in society.  Like a more agreeable version of David Mitchell's Timothy Cavendish in Cloud Atlas, Karl Pilkington's Douglas is irritated by those around him and generally wants no part of the nursing home's micro-society.  The fact that it's even surprising to the audience that Derek so willingly and lovingly cares after the elderly, regardless that they're not his family, is a commentary in and of itself.  Why do so many of us reach middle-age and suddenly find our parents, in their retirement years, to be so taxing?  They raise us for 18+ years but going to their house to help clean out the gutters is a Sisyphean ordeal.

In between Derek's character development scenes that build them to a sturdy foundation, we're given the story of the first episode and we see what Gervais and Derek can really do - and it's here that the program shines.  Anyone who's seen The Office knows how well Gervais can operate in a comedic mockumentary setting, but Derek takes things a step further and introduces a genuine dramatic element that is as evenly split with humor as "dramedy" can get, and is best explained (spoiler-free) by some of his previous work.  Gervais' 2009 film The Invention of Lying shows us a world in which everyone is perfectly straightforward because nobody has invented deceit.  People tell others their babies are ugly, casino employees warn you that the games are unfair and the house always wins, etc.  In one scene, Gervais is called to the hospital because it's believed that his mother is dying.  Jason Bateman, her physician, tells Gervais that she likely won't last through the night.  "On the upside, it is fajita night down in the cafeteria, so after mom kicks off you may want to go get something to eat."  It's black comedy gold, but in a heartbeat, Gervais, who has just invented lying, tells his dying mother that when she passes, she's going to a place remarkably like the modern Christian idea of Heaven.  She'll be young again, and see her late husband, and live in a mansion.  As he comforts her, he wells up with tears - and so do we, just moments after Bateman's hilarious candor about the evening's cuisine.

Derek ups the ante tenfold on The Invention of Lying.  The pilot's most heartfelt scenes tend to follow its funniest, and more than once my laughter faded to near tears like whiplash.  Most people think of comedy-dramas as being even sadder than most drama, offering excuses like "they trick you with the jokes then you feel terribly when things go wrong."  I think Derek is the opposite.  I left the show just feeling good.  Derek is a character on whom we can rely.  He's safely cemented himself as a good guy in our eyes, and that's terrific if you ask me.  What's even better is that Gervais, an avowed atheist, never makes any assumptions on the spiritual behalf of Derek's residents.  He never shrugs off their illnesses as "God's will," nor, when faced with the subject of death, does he simply dismiss them as "going back to God" or "in God's hands."  Derek takes full responsibility for these grandfathers and grandmothers, bringing their welfare onto 100% earthly grounds.  Keeping in line with my theory that Gervais is writing deeply about assisted living and the family's attitudes towards the elderly, it only makes sense that he keeps things absolutely on "our plane."

Derek is insanely effective comedically and dramatically.  On the one hand, Gervais' comedy hits high marks frequently.  On the other, without getting preachy, Gervais and Co. are showing us that ageism today is our problem to fix, and there are those who are willing to do it.  There are the Douglases in the world, who only feel that our seniors are taxing.  But there are also the Hannahs, who balance their work and care for their patients without becoming overly involved personally; and the Dereks, who give it their all every day, thankless as it sometimes may be.  I'm not certain which of the latter two characters I'm rooting for more, but I damn sure know I'll be importing this show from England however I must, and that as long as there are Dereks and Hannahs in the world, when my time comes I'll feel a little safer in their arms.