Ricky Gervais's After Life wins Netflix its first TV Choice Award | ...on the day filming starts on series 2 © Netflix

Ricky Gervais's After Life wins Netflix its first TV Choice Award

...on the day filming starts on series 2

Netflix has won its first TV Choice award – thanks to Ricky Gervais.

His show After Life claimed victory in the Best Comedy category of tonight’s awards ceremony. Winners are chosen based on public vote, and Gervais has 13.4million Twitter followers to mobilise.

Work has just started on the second series of the show, in which Gervais plays a man grieving for his wife, played in flashback by Kerry Godliman.

Gervais tweeted images from the set today, including the clapperboard and a picture of him laughing uproariously.

The cast of the second series has not been confirmed but is likely to include Ashley Jensen, Roisin Conaty, Diane Morgan, Tony Way, Mandeep Dhillon, Tom Basden, Penelope Wilton and Paul Kaye, all returning from series one.

In the first run Gervais’s character Tony had decided in his grief  there was nothing worth being polite about any longer, so said and acted as he pleased.

But it the last episode he had something of a revelation, and said: ‘I’m going to carry on saying and doing what I want and punishing the world, but I’m going to punish people who deserve it. I’m going to use my superpower for good.’

Last year the TV Choice award for best comedy was won by Benidorm – even thought ITV had cancelled it two months earlier.

Published: 9 Sep 2019

Live comedy picks

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.