After Life spoilers follow.
It's been a long and hard road for Tony (Ricky Gervais) over the past three seasons, but it's time to say goodbye to the weird and wonderful world of Tambury and After Life.
The arrival of season three broke the mould for Ricky, who until After Life had stuck to a tried-and-true structure for all his previous shows, The Office, Extras and Derek. In the cases of all of the above, there were two, six-episode seasons before one final special which effectively ended the show for good.
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It seemed, for a while at least, that this would be the case for After Life too. After all, why fix a system that isn't broken?
But in May 2020, Ricky was persuaded otherwise, and making the announcement on Twitter, he told fans: "Because so many of you watched #AfterLife2 so quickly and made it Number 1 again, the nice people at Netflix have suggested that I get off my fat arse and do another season. This is all your fault."
However, shortly after that, in a livestream chat with fans on Twitter, he asserted this was "definitely the last one", and joked he would "take Tambury out with a meteor if he had to" to ensure the show would end.
He had originally said that about After Life season two, but it seems Ricky fell in love with the rich world of Tambury as much as the viewers have.
Speaking to GQ in April 2020, Ricky explained: "Yeah, this is the first time I want to do a third series of anything I've ever done."
"The world's too rich. I don't have to go over old ground," he continued. "There's ten characters who could be the lead in something.
"The first [series] was establishing a central character going through the world almost as if it's a video game. Now there's lots of 'meanwhiles'.
"It's like Springfield [from The Simpsons] or something."
But this time he well and truly means it – with the final episode leaving things ambiguous, but no doubt final, for the struggling Tony.
But while After Life may well be over, Ricky's attachment to Netflix is not, and in the run-up to After Life season three, he revealed he already had three more projects in the pipeline with the streaming service.
Speaking to SiriusXM in December 2020, Gervais explained: "I've got it down to three totally different ideas and Netflix has already bought it because I told them I want to end After Life now and so they said, 'OK, we want the next thing'.
"We will just start with the next thing, same deal, but I don't know which one I'm going to go for. I can't even think about it yet. I have got the outline of three completely different sorts of sitcoms and shows."
Nothing official has been announced as of yet, but we have no doubt that a brand-new series to make us laugh, cry and rage in one go is just around the corner.
After Life is available now on Netflix.
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Freelance writer, Digital Spy
Tilly is Gold-Standard NCTJ accredited journalist with eight years of experience in entertainment journalism.
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