Blu-ray Review | Ricky Gervais is Derek

A playful cruelty floats on top of most of Ricky Gervais’s comic endeavours, and regrettably for some it proves impenetrable. None of Gervais’s works have suffered more for this than Derek - a hilarious yet moving mockumentary in the mould of The Office that was slammed by many critics for its portrayal of “the disabled” before it had even aired, despite actually being a brilliant satire on those who have to live outside mainstream society just because they can’t or won’t conform to it.
 
“It’s more important to be kind than to be clever or good-looking. I’m not clever or good-looking, but I’m kind.”

The eponymous character, played by Gervais, is one that my parents’ generation would have (innocently) branded “slow”, and today’s might place towards the upper end of the autistic spectrum. Gervais’s scripts, however, are careful to avoid branding Derek Noakes at all, and instead highlight his goofy quirks and many, many admirable - I’d even go so far as to say humbling - qualities. By way of a stirring example, the first episode of the 2013 series, which follows the 2012 pilot also presented on this disc, contains a beautifully-crafted scene that really shows up the flaws in society’s need to categorise and label. When asked by a local authority inspector to take a test for autism, Derek frankly replies, “Will I die? Will it change me in any way? Will I still be the same person?” When the inevitably hollow replies follow, he shrugs his shoulders and scuttles away. “Don’t worry about it then.”

The series takes place largely within the retirement home where Derek is employed, but it’s clearly more of a home to him than it is a mere job. The same is true of his two focal colleagues, Hannah and Dougie, albeit for very different reasons. Kerry Godliman’s Hannah is so devoted to keeping the home afloat that she has no life outside it, though the series does introduce an ill-at-ease love interest for her in its pilot episode. She’s necessarily harder than Derek, as is evident from her day-one headbutt, but nonetheless she’s every bit as sincere and selfless. “Egg with sideburns” Dougie, conversely, claims to see his role in the home as more of penance, even remarking at one point, “They send them [offenders given community service] here as punishment. Hilarious innit? I’ve been here ten years - what have I done?” In truth though, he’s as dedicated to the residents and his colleagues as Derek or Hannah are. Indeed, whilst Gervais still finds countless ways through which he can manhandle and ridicule his long-suffering friend Karl Pilkington, who plays the careworn caretaker, he also gifts him some of the series’ most triumphant hero moments, which blend Pilkington’s innate ire with just cause, often to startlingly uplifting effect. David Earl completes the core cast as Kev, an unemployed autograph hunter who shares a flat with Derek and Dougie - largely because nobody else will have him. Principally there to offer lewd comic relief, Kev still contributes to the series’ all-pervading pathos as even he, who you’d think might be the type tempted to bully and take advantage of Derek’s gentle sincerity, actually puts him up on pedestal, as becomes plain in the disc’s poignant final episode.

The episodes themselves are perhaps a little thin on plot, though there is an obvious theme at the heart of each that serves as a catalyst for Gervais’s involved character stories (such as the threatened closure of the home, a trip to the library, or even a talent show). The exception is the series’ final episode, which dextrously brings together a couple of clear narrative threads to complete our picture of both Derek the man and Derek the show, and is, I would contend, 2013’s best twenty-odd minutes of television - it’s certainly its most poignant. Gervais’s portrayal of the romance between a deceased resident and her bereaved husband is breathtakingly beautiful, effortlessly cutting through the veil of years to show the audience the couple as they once were, and will always be to each other. My wife’s spent over a decade working with older adults living with dementia, and her thesis was on the hope that those living with the dreadful disease and their loved ones use to fuel themselves, but no matter how many hours of reminiscences she pored over, I don’t think that she ever got quite as positive perspective as Lizzie and Gerald, who get to fall in love again each and every day as if it were the first time. Derek’s own tale of abandonment and reconciliation is almost as heartrending, particularly when it’s intercut with his musings on forgiveness and humanity, which seem to carry more weight coming from the obviously agenda-free Derek than they would the firm atheist who plays him, or indeed almost anyone else.

The Blu-ray’s extra content is, ironically, more consistently funny than the melancholy sitcom that it supplements. The twenty-minute behind-the-scenes feature took me back to the good ol’ days of The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts, built as it is around debutant telly actor Karl Pilkington’s musings on everything from acting techniques (he seems to genuinely think that he’s invented the method) to the “jigsaw” shooting schedules that go hand in hand with episodic television. You also get a decent selection of deleted scenes for your money, and a few bloopers too, many of them featuring the renowned Mr Pilkington at the height of his loveable idiocy.

“Shame more people aren’t like that, really,” Hannah says in the pilot, and these sentiments resonate throughout the whole series. Derek is David Brent through a mirror, brightly; a painfully honest Peter Pan for the modern era. He’s a little boy who never really grew up, who isn’t concerned by opinions and artifice, who thinks that a headlock is a “strong cuddle” and that the world would be a whole lot nicer if people were just kind to each other.

Disabled? More like free.

Derek is only presently available to own in 1080p HD on Blu-ray. The cheapest online retailer today is Amazon, where the disc can be bought for £12.32 with free delivery. Frustratingly, iTunes only offer the series in standard-definition, and without any bonus material or the pilot episode, and for almost as much!