We all miss someone we know is never coming back, someone whose loss slowed down the pace of everything in our lives. We all have lost someone very dear to us and gone through the terrible stabbing pain in the heart. In everybody’s life there comes a grieving moment from which we can never recover completely, and in some cases a moment from which we can never move past and remain stuck in the labyrinth where time doesn’t matter anymore and we just want it all to end, to stop. But hope is what keeps us moving along, hope is everything.
A British dark comedy web television series, After Life, showcases the vulnerability of human heart, how it copes up with life without someone you revolve your life around, the lingering pain and the loss of faith in your own life afterward. Created, directed and executive produced by Ricky Gervais, who also plays the main character Tony Johnson, the series was premiered on Netflix on 8 March 2019. After the death of his beloved wife Liza due to prolonged breast cancer, Tony loses all his will to live and contemplates to end his own life quite a few times.
But then as if taking revenge on life, he ordains himself with the superpower of living on his own terms and going around spreading bitterness about how unfair life is with all its complexities and the injustice of taking his wife away from him. The only living being he has affection left for now is his dog Brandy, his only other reason to go on living.
His wife Liza Jane Johnson as played by Kerry Godliman whom we only know from the few glimpses of her past married life with Tony and the recorded videos she left for Tony to help him move on with life after her, shows us the sweet side of Tony which he misplaces after losing Liza. The love and affection that they share with each other is beyond measurement, the once in a lifetime kind of love, which Tony describes as
“I’d rather be nowhere with her than somewhere without her”
But what Tony fails to realize is that he has still got a good lot around him, his office staff including Lenny (Tony Kay) letting him poke fun at himself, Sandy (Mandeep Dhillon) the new journalist always up and about with a smile and his brother-in-law Matt (Tom Basden) trying to set him up on dates and always checking up on him. Other than these people, Tony befriends a sex worker named Daphne (Roisin Conaty) and Julian Kane (Tim Plester), a drug addict who had also lost his girlfriend as a victim of a drug overdose and builds his emotional bonds over these friendships. In the process of behaving like an a**hole, Tony also develops liking for a nurse named Emma (Ashley Jensen) who looks after his dementia-suffering father at the nursing home.
But the secret of Tony’s newfound outlook towards life becomes an old widow Anne (Dame Wilton) whom he meets at the graveyard and the two bond over the fond memories of their former lovers. Anne tells him how she had a good long run with her husband, but now that he is gone, she lives thanking life for bestowing the kindness of bringing such a person into her life. And this is one day months after when Tony finds himself preaching about how precious gift life is, and how every moment of our existence is a choice we make between living and dying. With great insight into the deeper meaning of life but a slow-moving pace, After Life is not a show that would appeal to just everyone, but a selective audience. It holds more of a poetic touch to it with a slow uplifting tone.
The show signs off with the message that you got to treasure the few years you’ve got. You do not know when it would be your last meal or last hug with your friend, and that’s why you should do everything you love with passion. You’re not gonna be around forever, but that’s what makes it beautiful.
“Life is precious cause you can’t watch it again”