Netflix’s After Life Season Two Review

The first season of the Netflix dark comedy, After Life, truly stood out from the morbid and dry humour of its star and creator Ricky Gervais in the trailer. What it turned out to be was a poignant and realistic look at coping with loss and trying to find purpose to continue forward. With the current state of the world, those feelings are plentiful even if they aren’t centered around the same feeling of loss. The question is, can Gervais take what felt like an already completed story and find more to say?

The first season revolved around a man named Tony (Ricky Gervais) and his revelation to be a better person to those around him. He wanted to be a better friend, coworker and son to the people still living in his life. Things get complicated when their local paper is in danger of closing which would lead Tony and many of his friends to lose their jobs. It is up to him to find ways to save the paper and show its worth to the owner while trying to enjoy the little things in life and find some sense of normalcy.

That first season felt fresh due to the new concept and the world that was being established. We were meeting these characters for the first time, getting involved in their lives and growing attached to them. However, that concept and its themes aren’t as fresh come this second season therefore the series needed to find a way to keep things relevant and interesting. The result was a mixed bag of feelings that in the end came out on top.

The storyline this time around felt slow and extremely repetitive. Tony goes through the same story beats, the people around him are fairly one-dimensional and fulfill roles in his narrative. There are moments where humor is replaced with swearing to take the easy way out and it just feels like lazy writing. Many of the smaller subplots do not hit the same way and some of the characters have even become terribly annoying and pointless (I’m looking at you therapist!). However, while these may be negatives, one of them actually makes logical sense and makes the series feel more realistic.

When one deals will loss, there is never a single cathartic moment that gives them closure over the death of a loved one so for a TV series to do so would help close a story arc to move forward, but also not do justice to the PTSD that comes with that sort of life altering event. After Life depicts this in a repetitive way, however, by doing so accurately depict the struggles one faces with these feelings. Even if the story found ways to push the world around them forward, the inner turmoil of Tony continues to show a broken man trying in any way he can to find the person who once was. This was especially beautiful in episode 5 which happens to be one of the most emotional episodes of television so far this year.

What did you think of the second season of After Life? Let me know in the comments!

*still courtesy of Netflix*

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Dylan Phillips