If it were possible to speak to Ricky Gervais with honesty – the sort of obscure, marrow-deep honesty you can usually only find with a polygraph machine and zoo-grade barbiturates – I would be genuinely fascinated to ask him one question: what does he really think of Alley Cats? Watching the abrasive, smug, and completely mirthless new Netflix cartoon from the British comedy titan, I found it genuinely impossible to tell. Is this the work of a man who has lost all creative mooring, awash in his own self-belief? Or is it the work of a canny grifter-cynic, a man who has watched audiences lap up all his crudest, hokiest impulses in projects like Derek and After Life, and thought, “let’s just give the people what they want”?
Gervais writes, directs, and stars in all six short, depressing episodes of Alley Cats, which follows a group of foul-mouthed felines as they eke out a living in the city. There’s Gus (Gervais), a jaded everycat and de-facto leader of the group; burly bruiser Fang (Andrew Brooke); depraved, physically rebarbative Puke (David Earl); Ponce (Tom Basden), a snooty housecat slumming it with the strays; and Olive (Diane Morgan), too cool for the rest of the gang in a sort of oddball Phoebe Buffayish way. All the cats look fine enough – cartoonish and colourful – but they move with the same antiseptic smooth-stiffness that has marred most TV animation since hand-drawn techniques were priced out of fashion years ago.
