b'Life Has Got To Go On. Good Girl.We recently happened upon After Life, the Netflix seriesand, for us, it was pretty easy to binge watch throughseasons one and two. Ricky Gervais stars in the lead roleof Tony, a widower still mourning his wife, Lisa, whodied of breast cancer. He contemplates killing himself,but his dog, literally and metaphorically, saves Tonys life,over and over again.Some of the morepoignant scenes arewhen Tony and Anne,played by PenelopeWilton, share a parkbench at the cemetery. Gervais, who created thestory, and writes anddirects it, said about theseries, The big worryfor me was, could peo-ple go from laughingabout something ridicu-lous to crying aboutsomething very real? I think the answer is yes.One of the ideas in After Life is about how the mun-dane saves us. We need those little things, Gervaissaid. Death is the last taboo. Its imminent. Its going tohappen. We just dont want it to be now, whenever it is.But, we can still joke about it.With Gervais other shows, people would come up tohim and say how much they loved it. Gervais added,But, with After Lifeand this was before coronoavirus people would come up to me and say, I lost my sisterthree weeks ago or I lost my husband. No one says,Oh, I had to turn it off because it was too upsetting, or,It reminded me of something bad. You suddenly real-ize, of courseeveryones grieving. And the older youget, the more youve got to grieve.Season three of After Life is currently in production. Uwww.TheNewBarker.com THE NEW BARKER 27'