Finale reviews: THE AFFAIR (Season 1) • DEREK: THE SPECIAL • THE WRONG MANS

It's the time of year when U.S shows have their mid-season or seasonal finales, and UK shows have Christmas specials that occasionally act as series-enders. So I just thought I would briefly cover three shows I've been watching, that ended very recently...

Review: Channel 4's DEREK - Series 2

The intention behind Derek (and one that writer-star Ricky Gervais believes he's succeeded at) is to take an affectionate and half-serious look at the state of elderly health care in the UK, while making people fall in love with the eponymous simpleton Gervais plays. Never mind the fact Derek started life as a blunt characterisation of a mentally-disabled man, or that one of Gervais's own stand-up comedy shows saw him "doing Derek" to mimic the abnormal nerds with bad haircuts that occasionally pester him for autographs. Maybe he's had a change of heart since then, and now sees Derek-types as beacons of hope in a cynical world. Or maybe he's just realised his range as an actor (after six degrees of David Brent) immediately narrows into going "full retard"--as Robert Downey Jr's character described it in Tropic Thunder.

DEREK, series 1 finale

Ricky Gervais' sitcom Derek ended this week and Channel 4 have ordered a second series, but I'm sorry to say my thoughts haven't changed a great deal since episode 1. It's a show where Gervais can eulogize his world-view through the eponymous simpleton he plays—a softer take on the ugly sketch incarnation of autograph-hunter Derek Noakes, elevated to holiness by those around him because of his intrinsic kindness. Even characters that never appeared to care too much about Derek were moved to tears when interviewed about him during the last episode, which itself came packaged as a double-whammy of easy emotion: a funeral for one of the residents (whom we barely knew), and the arrival of Derek's estranged father (whom we never knew existed until now).

TV Review: Channel 4's DEREK

Last year's pilot was given a mixed reception by audiences and critics alike, but Derek's back for a six-part series written, directed and starring Ricky Gervais as the eponymous care home worker. It's easy to see why people are having trouble parsing their thoughts about a show like this; partly because it touches on subject matter many are uncomfortable with (the mentally infirm and social outcasts). But I think the bigger issue is having Ricky Gervais play the lead role, when it would have been more interesting to give it to someone closer to a genuine Derek Noakes—given how the show endeavours to appear realistic, yet has its reality burst every time you see "David Brent with an underbite" or An Idiot Abroad's Karl Pilkington dressed as a character from the Guess Who? board game.

Review: DEREK (Channel 4)

The good news: Ricky Gervais' Derek isn't the distasteful portrait of a mentally-disabled man many assumed it would be (based on the original sketch that featured a questionable version of the same character). The bad news: Derek was nevertheless a largely tedious half-hour that offered few laughs amidst an oppressively earnest atmosphere.

Derek, billed as a "one-off comedy-drama", perhaps because Channel 4 got cold feet about committing to a full series without testing the water first, found Gervais flying solo without comedy partner Stephen Merchant, but he still relied on many of the tropes from The Office, Extras and Life's Too Short—the documentary format with talking heads, and even the beginnings of a workplace romance. I'm just surprised it wasn't a showbiz retirement home so Gervais could crowbar in celebrity cameos from Z-list old-timers.

The biggest weaknesses here was probably Gervais' decision to cast himself and pal Karl Pilkington in leading roles. When Gervais played David Brent on The Office, it worked because he was a virtual unknown at the time, so you could buy into the whole situation. But now Gervais is a global star, so putting him into a "documentary" instantly undoes whatever magic may have been created if he'd simply cast someone else. It also doesn't help that Gervais' portrayal of Derek, while nuanced and restrained in some respects, was still largely "Gervais with a bad haircut jutting his lower jaw out". Pilkington's presence was even more egregious, as there was no real attempt to disguise him as a different character. This was just the Idiot Abroad in a ludicrous Mick Miller wig, behaving in exactly the same manner as his usual self, only now we know his quips are scripted.

Still, Derek showed more heart in 30-minutes than 210-minutes of the awful Life's Too Short, even if the emotional manipulation was sometimes too much to bear. You can get away with marinating things in Ludovico Einaudi's "Nuvole Bianche" (also used frequently in Shane Meadows' This Is England TV series), but the whole show was so earnest in its attempts to make you cry that it wound up feeling very laborious. When the old lady died, it would have been nice to share in Derek's despair at losing a friend (again), but we didn't really know her. The show was more interested in building the relationship between Derek and professional care home worker Hannah (Kerry Godliman), the kindly middle-aged woman with a deep affection for this odd little man. The best scene of the show was seeing Hannah contend with a group of rude teenage girls making fun of Derek as they sat together in a pub.

Overall, I'm glad Derek wasn't offensive or distasteful, but I'm disappointed it contained no real laughs, drowned in mawkishness at times, and destroyed its own reality by casting Gervais and Pilkington (whom you can't separate from their real-life persona's nowadays). Maybe a full series pickup will enable Gervais to get the recipe right, and I wouldn't be against that because Derek's a less irritating entity than Life's Too Short, but I can't say I'm all that keen to see more of sweet outsider Derek Noakes.

written & directed by Ricky Gervais / 12 April 2012 / Channel 4