Review of Ricky Gervais's new Netflix animation

Ricky Gervais’s sad descent from co-creator of The Office to peddler of soulless, half-arsed cash-grab tat continues with Alley Cats.

The new Netflix animation follows the formula of After Life, with his character vacillating between saying lazily offensive things, with as many f- and c-bombs as possible, then inexplicably being kind. But the twist? This time they’re cats.

Nothing wrong with a bit of swearing, of course. It can be brilliant, but this is just boorish banter – and is soul-crushingly, nihilistically, relentless.

Most of the time, Gervais’s gang of feral felines hang around tiresomely talking bollocks, about fingering, fighting or anal sex, but mainly how everyone and everything is a fucking cunt. Marvel at the edgelord saying the unsayable! All the vast Netflix resources at his disposal, and Gervais has created something with all the wit and charm of a podcast coming from an emotionally stunted 13-year-old’s bedroom.

Ironically, this is not five per cent as funny as the animated versions of the podcasts Gervais originally recorded with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington 25 years ago, back when he seemed to care.

The Alley Cats’ bilge is – allegedly – tempered because the animals are kind at heart. Or rather, they completely switch their personality to be so on a sixpence. They’ll have an encounter with death, prompting the Gervais fat cat, Gus, to regurgitate some vapid philosophy about how we don’t really die but live on ‘in the memories of friends and family’. Sad music plays to tell us we’ve got to be sad now. ‘Life is a gift,’ apparently. Yet Gervais wastes his with this. 

In a similarly cloying manner, these homeless misfits adopt a cute, wide-eyed kitten (Jo Hartley) who can’t find her way home to let Gus show some bolted-on, mawkish kindness. 

On the plus side, the animation looks great, and there are very occasional funny moments - such as the cats’ irrational fear of a cucumber – but they feel like they’ve come from another show. Sometimes Gus will excuse some behaviour with a line like: ‘We’re cats, that’s what we do.’ Imagine a human-based drama being so lax as to have a character explain his actions with: ‘I’m a person, that’s what we do.’ 

Some of the cast – Diane Morgan, Tom Basden and Kerry Godliman – try to bring some dignity to the endeavour, but it’s a lost cause. These Alley Cats need to be taken to the canal with a sack and a brick. 

Review date: 7 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett