It took me years to get round to watching this.

I was worried about it. The trailers looked bad. They showed Gervais getting too loose with his creation. Where The Office was a parody of an unfortunate loser, Life On The Road looked like a parody of a parody. A caricature of Brent. Which was unnecessary, because he already was a caricature. Kinda like in Photoshop when you click on some filter twice by mistake, and the picture becomes completely indistinct.



The Guardian wrote a good article about it, about knowing when to walk away. The older I get the more I realise knowing when to leave is one of the most important skills worth mastering in life. Monosyllabic after-parties spring instantly to mind, but this applies to everything; getting out of the bath, relationships, hotel breakfast buffets, YouTube binges, death. If you fall asleep in the sun, you gawn get burnt boy.

Which can turn out well.

But mostly doesn’t.

Having made one of the most outstanding things to ever air on television, Gervais had to come back for more. My feeling was that Life On The Road would be little more than the skidmark of a perfectly flushed Office-shaped turd, the fruits of the most glorious session ever spent, locked away in the environs of an upstairs bathroom, the defining mid-morning sit-down of all our lives. With this in mind, better to bow to the lovely stuff that flushed clean first-time, and get the Duck out to wipe the rest of the toilet bowl clean.

So I watched it the other day.



It was decent I tell you.