| Worth seeing: | as a peculiar blend of potty-mouthed pontificating and warmhearted drama |
| Featuring: | Ricky Gervais, Tom Basden, Andrew Brooke, David Earl, Diane Morgan, Jo Hartley, Kerry Godliman, Natalie Cassidy, Tony Way |
| Key crew: | Elliot Dear, Hugo Donkin, Ricky Gervais |
| Channel: | Netflix |
| Length: | 16 minutes |
| Episodes: | 6 |
| Broadcast date: | 7th August 2026 |
| Country: | UK |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Gus (Ricky Gervais) is a crude, cantankerous, overweight alley cat, who lives – with his friends – in a derelict house in the suburbs.
They spend their lives sitting on the sofa watching – and commenting – on TV and pontificating about life and love, taking an occasional stroll around the neighbourhood.
The gang includes the tough-boy Fang (Andrew Brooke), the scrawny, sex-starved Puke (David Earl), Gus’ broody sister Olive (Diane Morgan) and the well-bred, straight-laced Ponce (Tom Basden), who does his best to bring some respectability to the group.
On one of their trips out of the house, they encounter a lost kitten (Jo Hartley). Her plight brings out the other side of Gus, as he pledges to help her find her home – and look after her until they do.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Alley Cats is created, written by, directed by and starring Ricky Gervais – and it shows.
Much of Gus’ musings about life as he sits on the sofa – watching TV Goggle-box style – sounds like it could be part of one of Gervais’ stand-up routines. And the softer side of the curmudgeonly protagonist has more than a hint of After Life.
His fellow voice artists are almost universally familiar from his previous work – Tom Basden, Diane Morgan, Kerry Godliman and David Earl all featured in After Life, while Godliman and Earl were also in Derek, Andrew Brooke appeared in Cemetery Junction and David Brent: Life on the Road – and to give it a real family feel, many have been in each other’s shows, with Basden a regular in Morgan’s Mandy and Brooke appearing in Basden’s Here We Go.
Overtly a misanthropic show-off, Gus’ true personality – someone with a heart, looking for love and offering support to those more vulnerable himself – shines through as major life events unexpectedly come calling.
A peculiar blend of foul-mouthed invective with warmhearted drama, Alley Cats is rated 18 for expletives and sexual content, which will distance itself from more demure viewers who might otherwise go for a show in which the blowhard main character softens to take in a stray, look for love and bond with his estranged mother. It sometimes feels a little uneven, leaving you feeling the target audience is quite niche.
It has echoes of the 1990s animated sitcom King of the Hill, but casting the characters as cats, rather than disheartened men, enables Gervais to push the envelope a little further; in this day and age, viewers might be less accepting of the idea of a middle-aged misanthrope befriending a vulnerable young girl.
Spread over six quarter-of-an-hour episodes, it doesn’t drag, but ultimately, not much happens. There’s only really one storyline – the rag-tag group of potty-mouthed cats tempering their behaviour – or not – to help a lost kitten find her way home – which doesn’t really stretch too comfortably over six episodes, despite a handful of moments of self-discovery for Gus.
Rather than firing on all cylinders, Gervais feels like he’s box ticking – but if box ticking didn’t lead to results, people wouldn’t do it.