So I decided to bite the proverbial bullet and watch Derek, merely so I could have an informed opinion of this controversial "comedy drama".
Most of us have our hot spots, the tender places we can't be poked too hard without encurring a viseral reaction in terms of topics explored or simply displayed on television be it fictional or documentary. For some it's cruelty to animals, others it's distressed children, for me it's confused elderly. I find it extremely hard to watch, and so really had no intent to watch Derek which seemed to be mocking those mentally disabled and elderly folks in homes.
I will say straight off that I don't think Derek MOCKED anyone. That's not to say I thought it was great television, I didn't.
It is very hard to watch it WITHOUT bringing into it all I knew of Ricky Gervias, his history with the character Derek and his entire "mong" issue that has been played out over twitter and in the media. If I based my opnion entirely on all of that, I certainly would think Ricky thinks it's funny and clever to mock the disabled and those "on the edges of society" - as he terms it. So, I tried not to do that and simply watched the show only judging in what I saw on screen.
And what I saw, was a simplistic, flawed drama with very little comedy and a whacking great lack of direction.
In terms of a TV show alone, I think it was all over the place in terms of characters. Derek (and for now we'll just ignore all that's been said and ASSUME he is a man with several developmental and health problems, likely on the spectrum because that is what I SAW), we were told over and over had a "heart of gold", yet it wasn't really shown. I balked when Hannah said "I've never seen him feel sorry for himself" early on in the programme, as at that point there was little evidence he SHOULD feel sorry for himself. He had friends, a job, a flatmate, people he loved, hobbies. So, are we to assume he should feel sorry for himself because he's disabled? She said he'd been through so much but very little clues were given as to what exactly?
The comedy element was I felt the weakest, I didn't laugh once. The only part I found vaguely humourous was the scene with Derek and Hannah trying to find out if Tom was gay. This scene worked because the comedy didn't come from Derek being "stupid" but from Hannah acting like a preteen and Tom gently poking fun at her.
I am assuming the scenes of Derek sitting in the pudding and falling in the pond were meant to be the real humour pieces but they left me as cold as that water Ricky landed in. The problem from the comedy side of things comes, in my opinion, from the flawed principle that Ricky has that it's funny to laugh at someone who is mentally disabled being, well, mentally disabled. It really isn't. There has to be MORE to the humour than laughing at a man with one leg fall over, or someone with Aspergers confuse a social situation. The humour must come from someplace else other than "aren't they useless?!". With Derek, I felt that element was sorely missing.
I don't know what (if any) research Ricky did but I'm sure carers like Hannah could tell lots of genuinely funny stories that don't involve someone simply falling over or running about naked.
Derek's friend Doug (Karl Pilkington) was also underdeveloped. He seemed to exist with the preknowledge that we would all know Karl's personality and so would just tack that on to make Doug a rounded person. There seemed little logic in why he was part of the "in crowd". Becuase he has a bad hair do and glasses? The grumpy (but with a heart of gold) caretaker is a classic, but I felt Doug laked the bite and sarcasm of this sterotype. And the pay off of his true kindness (by fixing Joan's painting after she died) didn't ring true with him calling Derek to show him. Surely it would have had a bigger impact if Derek, Hannah or the camera crew had discovered it themselves? That way Doug can keep up his pretense about not caring about their "junk".
All of that said, I did find the latter part of the show very moving. The story of Derek's friendship with Joan, the way she made him feel, was lovely. It gave a small hint that maybe the "things he'd been through" were people who did make him feel that accidents did make him a bad person. Ricky's piece to camera was very powerful and well acted, had depth and emotion.
I just felt what was the point of it all, what was the story Ricky was trying to tell? I may be simplistic in my tastes because I like a message, a point, or something and I just felt Derek was awash with lots of half-baked ideas. Even the abuse Derek received in the pub was tame and lacking the hard bite of reality. Derek himself could have been a wonderful character who COULD teach us about the truth of life. He could be an observer who says the things many of us ignore or try not to think about. But it seemd Ricky didn't have the drive to really push that side and was lost on his need to have Derek do stupid things to make us laugh. And have the rest of the cast tell us how funny what what a heart of gold he had.
(As an aside, what did Derek do as a job at the home? He wasn't the caretaker, and seemed to look after the old people from his heart of gold rather than as a specific job, as he was often sitting with his friends, watching Tv or napping.)
The show didn't make me angry, didn't even make me uncomfortable but it did leave me feeling that Ricky was desperately trying to prove how much he cared about the "undesirables" in life and show all those nay-sayers wrong. But it REALLy is hard to stomach that idea when you've seen how the Derek character has been thrown out there time and again through Ricky's career - always a figure of fun to be pointed at and mocked. All his posting of "mong" faces on Twitter etc show he's doing them THINKING they are funny. Funny to a 3 year old who thinks funny faces are the height of wit, maybe. And every so often in Derek, that feeling would rise as I felt Ricky slip out of the character and become a comedian doing the stupid face of a slow person.
I have no idea WHY he's so insistant that Derek does not suffer any actual disablities because a) clearly he does (a grown man who has no understanding of what £20,000 would buy for instance) and b) does it make it better to laugh at someone who is simply an idiot?
Karl Pilkington is known as an "idiot" but it's obvious he's a man of regular intelligence, who - for whatever reason - just has very odd ideas of the way the world does and should work. Laughing at him is very different from laughing at someone who is struggling to understand the simplest of concepts in the world.
I think Ricky COULD make Derek a wonderful character, there was certainly glimpses of it, but it requires him accepting the knowledge of those better educated than him about disablities. It takes him listening to the stories of those who work. I'd rather see Derek become the man he could be heartbreaking and wonderful, showing us the REAL problems people face and commenting - as only those who are not bound by our stupid polite society rules can do - on the secret of life, the universe and everything. And not sitting in custard.
