Oh, the humanity

Ricky Gervais offends people only to nag them for prudishness

For Ricky Gervais, nothing is sacred.

Or if one thing is, it’s sacrilege. From deriding religion to, more broadly, secular woke orthodoxy, Gervais thrives on popping the balloons of what he perceives to be idiotic and pretentious. His brand of polemical comedy is the kind of thing that the phrase “mileage will vary” was coined for.

Gervais’s new Netflix stand-up special, titled “Humanity,” doubles down on his recent trend of take-no-prisoners frankness (some might say smugness) that defined his infamous Golden Globes hosting gigs.

Gone is the self-examination underlying the awkward discomfort of his original U.K.-produced “The Office” and follow-up series “Extras.” Now anyone offended by the lines Gervais gleefully tramples over—well, they’re the problem. Gervais spends nearly half of his 75 minutes onstage taking thin-skinned haters to task, which, ironically, seems rather thin-skinned.

The outspoken atheist re-establishes his bona fides right off the bat by leveling potshots at Jesus. Having warmed up on that speed bag—to which he routinely returns for quick jabs—Gervais shifts to steady punches at humanity (hence the title), all landed with provocative calculations of inhumanity.

Much of it is funny and well-observed (yes, in many ways dogs do make for better humans), but Gervais can’t resist taking things too far. Granted, that’s an inherent part of the stand-up comic’s job. Taboos are meant to be mocked, and audiences are generally hip enough to know what they’re in for.

But unless you’re predisposed to give Gervais and his cheeky anarchy a lot of rope, you may find some bits too edgy. Hyper-aware of this possibility, Gervais literally explains to the audience why a line of Caitlyn Jenner digs isn’t transphobic.

At one point, he goes morbid with food allergies. Gervais begins in Seinfeldian fashion, complaining about how someone’s peanut sensitivity inconvenienced him, but then he gets darker—openly fantasizing about how he could trigger natural selection, working first-hand to kill someone who’s afflicted. It’s a display of petty masochism.

I agree with Gervais’s encore thesis: It’s healthy to laugh at our anxieties and at ourselves. A root virtue of humanity, however, is patience. From that we extend grace and love. Impatience grants neither, but that’s all Gervais has for any human who doesn’t see things as he does, including those who don’t share his humor.