GOOD GRIEF RICKY!

 Afterlife Stolen from Submitted Manuscript

In yet another case of mind-burgling robbery from your favourite celebrity thief it can now be revealed that aside from Extras, Flanimals, The Office and all the other examples, Afterlife is also a rip-off.

Back in 2021 during a relaunched plagiarism claim against Gervais for his awful Flanimals imitation, it came to our attention that Afterlife had also been stolen from a submitted manuscript.

As the unintentional collator of Gervais’ thievery, aspiring scriptwriter known Ben Russell contacted me via my lawyer with a similar account of how he had submitted a work, only to have it re-appear without permission as major Netflix production Afterlife, supposedly 'authored by Ricky Gervais’. 

Yes, you read that correctly, we are talking about Afterlife. At first this seemed too crazy to believe. Another one? Must be some crank jumping on the ‘ripped-off-by-Ricky’ bandwagon. But when we saw the original script, entitled Good Grief, and spoke to the author, it was immediately clear that this was a genuine case and that Russel's work had in fact been stolen and re-packaged. Basically Gervais just changed the cat to a dog and stuck his name on it. Here's a taster:

The posthumous video scene in Afterlife is directly lifted from Good Grief, as well as pretty much everything else. It goes on...and on....and on...all the way through. 

As things progressed we looked into the possibility of teaming up and mounting a class action against Gervais comprising Adam Wells and Darren Ashton (Extras), Ben Russell (Afterlife) and myself (Flanimals). According to lawyers, however, each case would need to be pursued individually due to the difficulties presented by copyright infringement in cases where works have been er... "slightly altered". Each case is unique and has to be pursued on its own merits.

Furthermore, these types of legal challenges are phenomenally expensive to pursue, especially against someone with pockets as deep as Gervais profiting from the goods he has stolen off the litigants. There is no state assistance in the UK for victims of this type of theft, despite the fact that it is a criminal offence. The police only get involved with mechanical copying cases, where, for example counterfeit clothing brands or recordings are distributed. Litigation costs can quickly ramp up to £250,000 plus to cover court time, expert analysis, proof of access etc., even though it would be blatantly obvious to a small child that the similarities could not possibly be a coincidence and that the Gervais versions were rip-offs of the prior work.  

Another factor is that the goods have been stolen from submissions from relatively unknown artists, who don't usually have a spare £250K in their back pocket. 

Gervais and his headbanger lawyers are, of course, well aware of all this and with a funds exceeding £100 million to play with he has shown no sign whatsoever of relenting under any circumstances in any of these cases. The game is just to repeatedly deny the bleedin obvious and rack up the true author's costs until they are financially ruined. In fact, Gervais, even mocked Ben Russell through the media while he was trying to challenge him by using his original title for an article:

They steal from you then bankrupt you if you try to do something about it.... 

...and in Gervais case, taunt you on top of it.

Gervais' thievery has severely damaged, if not ruined, the fledgling careers of several original creative artists by stealing their ideas then hiding behind the legs of his lawyers like a snivelling coward, all while denying the public the real - far superior- original. 

If you still find Gervais is funny after reading this I suggest you seek professional help.

And if you are a creative with something to submit, make sure it doesn't go anywhere near this thief or his management team.

Oscar Wilde said; "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness".

But this is not imitation, it is theft.