Ricky Gervais has celebrated his new animated series Alley Cats reaching the number one spot on Netflix, brushing aside a string of dire one-star reviews.
The After Life creator, 65, returned to television with Ricky Gervais: Alley Cats, an animated sitcom centered on a rag-tag bunch of London street cats. The series debuted on Friday to overwhelmingly negative reviews from major critics.
On Sunday, Gervais shared a screenshot on Instagram showing the show had reached Netflix's top spot, meaning it had the highest number of views over the previous 24 hours. He wrote: "Oh. My. God. I've never been so happy. Best fans in the f***ing world."
The short-form series follows five rough-and-tumble strays and their dapper domestic mate as they navigate the challenges of the modern world on the streets of London.
Gervais on the show's characters
Speaking ahead of the release, Gervais said he made the characters unwanted "to add to the pathos and the jeopardy," and wanted them to be "bottom-of-the-pile, so you're rooting for them straight away."
He described the setup as "almost like a typical British sitcom class conflict," explaining that the strays are "uneducated," "hungry" and "streetwise," while their regular gang member is a "middle-class pet who's educated." That contrast, he said, "is what starts all the conflict and all the bickering."
Critics pan the series
Despite the Netflix ranking, major critics largely lambasted the series as an exhausting, unfunny mix of excessive profanity and unearned, manipulative sentimentality.
The Daily Mail's Deborah Ross gave it one star, writing that "something has gone very wrong with Ricky Gervais." She said there was no coherent storyline beyond a lost kitten who stays with the gang on the promise they'll get her home, adding that the show "slips into sentimentality but also goes full cliché," calling it "the 'a-family-is-whom-you-choose-them-to-be' one."
Metro's Tom Percival also gave one star, writing he was shocked that a man behind two of the best comedies of all time and the character David Brent "could produce such lazy claptrap."
The Independent's Louis Chilton said the futile question hanging over Gervais's career has been whether he would ever match The Office again, adding that Alley Cats made him wonder if Gervais "even has it in him to make another Life's Too Short."
NME's Matt Maytum also awarded one star, describing the show as "a cross between a sitcom and a Pixar movie. But with swearing." Radio Times' Jack Seale wrote that the mix of "raucous crudeness and simplistic sentimentality" has become "the signature Gervais style," but that this doesn't make Alley Cats "any more appetising," adding that "in 2D, his writing falls flatter than ever."
The i Paper's Emily Baker said Gervais could have "changed the narrative on his 'old man yells at cloud' act," but instead Alley Cats "is the same old provocative rubbish that arrives not with a roar, but a meow." Alley Cats is available to stream on Netflix.
