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The Office<\/em> celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. It remains Ricky Gervais\u2019 best and rightly most celebrated work. Alley Cats<\/em>, on the other hand, feels quite a distance from those glory days. His animated series is firmly in late-era Gervais, of a piece with After Life<\/em> or Derek<\/em>, with all of his recent indulgences present: grumpy observations about life, back-of-the-class crudities, and regular U-turns into mawkishness.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Clearly, Gervais has found a comfortable creative groove to settle down into, an audience willing to listen, and a benefactor in Netflix willing to back him. Yet even with a fresh medium \u2014 it follows a Family Guy<\/em>-esque animation style, no attempt at much advanced artistry \u2014 so much about this show feels just lazy and weak. Each of the six episodes runs to around 16 or 17 minutes each, and somehow they still drag, with barely a plot to speak of.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Ostensibly, the main narrative concerns a cute kitten named, erm, Kitten (Jo Hartley), trying to get back to her family, while a cadre of grubby alley cats, led by Gus (Gervais), teaches her about the university of life. Even that thin thread of story is largely disregarded for ambling, sweary conversations about nothing in particular \u2014 like a crude, semi-improvised version of Aardman\u2019s Creature Comforts<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The bizarre tonal shift into emotional finales each episode feels utterly unearned.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n The level of swearing here feels particularly childish, maybe summoning the same juvenility that drives Seth Rogen\u2019s Sausage Party<\/em>, another deeply stupid animation for adults. But Gervais\u2019 script (he writes and directs every episode) seems to simply find swearing in itself funny. Fine \u2014 if you are a 13-year-old boy. One select \u2018punchline\u2019 at the end of one scene: \u201cSays you, you fucking cunt!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Elsewhere, the material seems yet another opportunity for Gervais to air his politically incorrect grievances. He still seems angry about charities like Comic Relief and Live Aid, for some reason (it has previously come up in his TV shows and his stand-up). \u201cOooh, let\u2019s save Africa,\u201d moans Gus at one point. \u201cLet\u2019s do a fucking song and beg the West for money and then spend it on fucking corrugated iron to build a shit house.\u201d Later, he does an impression of someone with learning difficulties. The bizarre tonal shift into emotional finales each episode \u2014 soundtracked to James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Coldplay, of all bands \u2014 feels utterly unearned.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n If there is any saving grace to this all, it is in the talented voice cast, most returning players in Gervais\u2019 regular ensemble. Sneery house cat Ponce, voiced by The Ballad Of Wallis Island<\/em>\u2019s Tom Basden, and crusty old Puke (who once \u201cgave a hedgehog anal\u201d), voiced by Brian And Charles<\/em>\u2019 David Earl, are the brighter spots.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Otherwise, it\u2019s par for the course for this once-groundbreaking comedian. Gervais\u2019 regular refrain, when faced with criticism, is to chastise anyone who might be offended. He has built his comedy persona around being a proud provocateur, immune to hurt feelings or oversensitive ears. The problem here is that for the most part, Alley Cats<\/em> is too stale, too inert, too empty to actually provoke. It\u2019s not that it\u2019s offensive. It\u2019s just that it\u2019s not very good.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n About as funny as Nightmare Alley and about as visually compelling as Cats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A group of stray cats, led by the portly Gus (Ricky Gervais), take a lost kitten (Jo Hartley) under their wing, in the hope of finding her home. The Office celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. It remains Ricky Gervais\u2019 best and rightly most celebrated work. Alley Cats, on the other hand, feels quite a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12692,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12690\/revisions\/12692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Alley](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/alley-cats.jpg\")
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