Ricky Gervais may never make a sitcom again after Alley Cats
Ricky Gervais - who created hit sitcoms, including The Office, Extras, Derek and After Life - may not create another comedy series after animated show Alley Cats, which comes out in 2026, because he wants to focus more on stand-up.
Ricky Gervais' upcoming sitcom series could be his last as he wants to focus more on stand-up.
The comedy legend, who is behind hits The Office, Extras, Derek and After Life, is releasing an animated series called Alley Cats, on Netflix in 2026.
However, Ricky thinks he is unlikely to make another TV show after Alley Cats because the success of his latest tour, Mortality - which has just bagged the star a Golden Globe nomination and globally drops on Netflix on December 30 - has motivated him to write more stand-up material.
On the latest episode of JaackMaate's Happy Hour podcast, host Jack Dean, 32, asked Ricky: "After Alley Cats, do you have any plans to go back into writing a new sitcom?"
Ricky replied: "I don't know. I'm really loving stand-up at the moment. When I first started, I thought of myself as a writer, director and actor, in stuff I’d written and directed, and you’d do the odd film, funny project, podcast, and then I tried stand-up, and I did stand-up tours between series.
"And the last few years, maybe the last six, seven, eight years, it's switched around. I feel that stand-up is my job.
"I feel that I've always got to be doing stand-up. Like when I finish a project, I'd think of doing something else, and it will take three years – Alley Cats will be, I think, three or four years after After Life ended.
"But I've just finished the tour, and I've put in New Material Nights in January. So once I've finished that, I put that on Netflix, and I'm starting again. I feel now that I'm a touring Netflix stand-up, and I wonder what I'll do in the daytime."
Ricky will only agree to do a project if it sounds "amazing".
After Jack asked what keeps him motivated to do stand-up, Ricky explained: "It gets harder even stand-up. If I do three gigs in a row now at my age, I wake up, and I think, 'Was I run over last night?' I thought, 'Jesus Christ. I've got to do another gig tonight.'
"It gets sort of harder, and I don't know if there's an adrenaline dump that I don't notice at the time, or it might just be I'm 64.
"When I was a kid, the thought of being 64 was, 'Do you live that long?' I know it's different now. I mean, I should be retiring anyway soon. And I don't think about retiring, but I just think it takes a little bit more.
"Also, it's the £10,000 for the chickens. I think, 'I don't need to do it. I don't need £10,000 to have a chicken.' So something's got to be amazing for me to do it."
