If the words “Ricky Gervais” and “dwarfs” in one sentence make you laugh before you even know anything else, have I got a Ricky Gervais/dwarf show for you.
On Sunday night, HBO launches “Life’s Too Short,” which debuted on BBC in the UK back in November. After watching just three episodes, I can predict even without putting on my TV psychic robe that even more people will be offended in this country.
And that won’t be an easy task. When the dwarf mockumentary series launched on the BBC, a huge number of stiff-upper-lips gave way to snarls — all directed at Gervais.
Whether you grin or grrr at the series, will, in short (sorry), depend on whether you love Gervais or find him a big jerk.
Seeing how I have a low-rent sensibility, I, of course, laughed out loud during all three advance episodes.
For the series, Gervais teamed up with partner Stephen Merchant and self-described “dwarf-actor” Warwick Davis to create a show which uses the same single-camera, fake cinéma vérité techniques as The Office” and “Extras,” and targets the same types, too — self-aggrandizing delusional gasbags.
The biggest delusional gasbag of all? Little Davis, who is in real life a successful actor, but here plays a hard-luck version of himself.
Not only does the Davis caricature brag constantly, but he’s completely delusional believing he is a “quite famous film star,” and a “dwarf-about-town” celebrity.
Davis, in high actor mode, compares himself to Martin Luther King saying, “Sure, the dwarf wasn’t taken from his homeland, enslaved, whipped and forced to change his name . . . but I’ve never seen a black man fired from a cannon!”
In this fake life, he hasn’t had a gig in forever, gets on everyone’s nerves and is constantly bothering Gervais and Merchant to get him work. He also runs a talent agency, “Dwarves for Hire,” but he only gives himself the jobs.
Into the mix of hilarious sight gags, comes real-life “quite famous film stars” like Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Liam Neeson — all playing themselves as annoying, touchy ac-tors with demands.
Neeson demands Gervais and Davis improvise with him since he has decided he is a natural comedian, for example.
To a knock-knock joke, he answers, “I’ve contracted AIDS. I got it from an African prostitute who had to sell herself to support her family in a famine-ravaged country.” He thinks he’s brilliantly funny.
Depp hires him to study how a dwarf moves since he’s taken the role of “Rumpelstiltskin” in a Tim Burton movie, and then abuses him.
Helena Bonham Carter uses him as a stand-in for a child actor and then hates looking at him and makes him stand in a garbage pail.
Either you’ll laugh out loud, knowing that Davis helped create this, or call for Gervais’ head — probably in a garbage pail.