It seems the collapse of the Gervais-Merchant relationship was to blame. Life’s Too Short reeked of a strained creative partnership.
Office and Extras were born of Gervais’ real life struggles but once he made it big his projects lost direction. He sort of found his mojo again with Afterlife but the excruciating cringe comedy was missing - which was presumably what Merchant brought to the table.
Awkward situations in which Gervais is cornered by various weirdos, probably dreamt up by Merchant, was the magic recipe.

That would be about the level of Gervais' output these days, unfortunately. He's been desperately unfunny for years. And that's coming from someone who listens to his XFM and podcast stuff almost every night. The ego went through the roof and the quality went down the toilet. If anyone says they don't like, say, Derek, he berates them for not getting it when it just wasn't funny.

Hasn't it already being done? I always felt that WTWB was based on Dinnerladies, the Victoria Wood comedy. To be fair I was never a fan of Victoria Wood, but regardless, I found Dinnerladies to be dire.
Or maybe Gervais was thinking of The Thin Blue Line? Rowan Atkinson has had a pretty stellar career, hes a fantastic comedian, but again that sitcom, for me, was truly awful.
Both, I think, are examples of just pointless, dull and dreary sitcoms that seem to have some mysterious success on the BBC. I really struggle to imagine anyone actually enjoying them, but they do. Dinnerladies in particular was popular, if I remember rightly.

Does anyone else think that Gervais should make this his next TV project?
It would be wonderfully meta. And if "Mrs Brown's Boys" can be voted 'best sitcom of the 21st century" (
), imagine how successful WTWB could be.
It would appeal unironically to all the Mrs Brown's Boys fans, whilst also providing a perverse kind of entertainment to those people who know Gervais is taking the piss out of such lowest-common-denominator shows. Plus, he's could be as outrageous and offensive as he likes because it's all being done ironically. In fact the mission would be to make the show as awful as possible.
Clinton/Kaine 2016

'OK we get the message, it's crap.'
You're having me on.
It's that man again!!

I loved Extras but always felt the WTWB segments to be overlong.. OK we get the message, it's crap.

The adolescent fascination with and tittering about sex (all the double entendres) made me think of Are You Being Served? and Open All Night, both of which I find ghastly and unfunny. Very lowest-common-denominator.
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

It was a parody but done rather well.
It was no way poking fun at Two point Four children which was rather different and slightly offbeat, ie it had better writing and Mrs Brown Boys is post Extras and is 'post modern vintage!'
Its that man again!!

i was trying to think what it was most like Two point Four Children is the one that most springs to mind, Mrs Brown's boys maybe.
It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!

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I found it funnier that a lot of so-called 'comedy sitcoms' of today.