Netflix's After Life Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

5. It Is Incredibly Charming

What we're looking at here is essentially a remake of Groundhog Day with a healthy sprinkling of It's A Wonderful Life. It draws from both of the central questions in those films - the ideas of bettering ourselves and the world through selflessness in the case of the former and a more extreme version of It's A Wonderful Life's what if quandry. Here the question isn't "what if I wasn't born?", it is "what if I just act as badly as the worst people in society who seem to profit anyway?"

The journey the show takes to get to the answers to those questions is incredibly charming and Tony's revelation is the key to that. Because Gervais is somehow very endearing despite being a jackass - because we see precisely the pain behind his behaviour and the hints of who he was in his wife's video messages - it feels almost... enriching to see him turn away from the darkness.

And despite some definitely swerves into over-sentimenality and sweetness at times, it's all entirely forgivable because it's the kind of show that is infectious in its agenda. Weirdest of all for a show so tuned into ideas of suicide, nihilism and despair, it's very, very feel-good.