The most cynical TV show I've ever seen: The father of an autistic teenager attacks Ricky Gervais' new comedy

I haven't seen Derek and don't intend to. But it rankles that the Mail is posing as the defender of autistic and other disabled people.

The Mail has it in for Gervais:

'He's the one with the problem': Susan Boyle hits out at Ricky Gervais after his 'mong' insult

'Boring', 'underwhelming' and 'restrained': The critics verdict is in on Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais... but he says the show was 'pitch perfect'

Do you need an audience? Ricky Gervais fails to make girlfriend Jane Fallon laugh as they shelter under giant umbrella

'I was an atheist at eight': Ricky Gervais caught up in Twitter spat with Christians after saying he doesn't believe in God

Some plank has posted this comment under the Gervais article.

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www.newshuddlines.blogspot.com

And so the Dacre Drip poisons the national consciousness.
THIS is what Leveson needs to be looking at, these liars need to be held to account.

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Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

I have always thought that our Ricky isn't as funny as he thinks he is.

Very much a +1 on that.

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I accidentally trod on a copy of the Daily Mail. Luckily, I found some dog muck to wipe my shoe on.

The stuff he does with Stephen Merchant is very good but most of the stuff he writes himself would probably be rejected by most commissioning editors if his name wasn't attached to it.

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www.newshuddlines.blogspot.com

He's not just doing it for himself though. The same people that give Cameron £250,000 in exchange for attacking employment law are served well by this too. I wonder how they're all connected.

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MY COMMENTS ARE FROM THE HORSES MOUTH AND ARE ALL FACTS

Ricky Gervais may not be everybody's taste. That's fine.
But that's not really the issue here.

The butt of the joke is the character Gervais plays and his attitude and language, not autistics or other disabled people.
In that way, what he is doing is similar to what Johnny Speight did with Alf Garnet nearly 50 years ago.
Then, as now, some people confused a scripted, fictional character with the writer and the actor playing the part.
Then, as now, the gutter press encouraged that confusion in order to stir up resentment and hatred - how long before the Mail's readership obediently responds to the dog whistle with a backlash against the disabled in the comments?
"Wot abart freeedum of speeech?", "One rule for them......", "Blue Badge scroungers", "There's nothing wrong with 99% of them - FACT", "I met a man whose brother said he knew a man whose next door neighbour claims 000s a week in handouts AND drives a Motorbility Ferrari because he told the do-gooders he only has one leg, when all the time he's the Prima Ballerina for the Bolshoi Ballet. You couldn't make it up"

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

from what i'd read in the lead up to "derek" being shown it'd been recieved pretty well by disabled bloggers and writers. the mail has managed to find someone (not in any way disabled themselves) who didn't like it, ok for a tv review, but not news.

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i have an art blog: http://procrastinationathon.blogspot.com/
and a review blog: http://blindwithwoodenhands.blogspot.com/
double blog! what does it mean?

Gervais, the one what wrote the play said:

'Derek is nerdy, geeky, slow-witted and a wally, if I say I don’t mean him to be disabled, then that’s it. A fictional doctor can’t come along and prove me wrong.’

Exactly. He's making fun of an idiot and the stupid things he says.
And if that's put off-limits then that's the end of Mailwatch.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

I thought in Mail/Hitchin Land autism did'nt exist and they were just very naughty children who need a good thrashing to get them to pull their socks up!

That's right. Except when it's an opportunity to bash Ricky Gervais.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

Although Caitlin Moran (in the Times, this weekend) pointed out that Derek, aside from conversations that sounded like offcuts from The Office and a Dawn-alike 'voice of sanity' character (the care home manager), probably only managed one thing, which was to introduce a new perjorative word for people with learning difficulties into popular usage.

She drew attention to the scene where Derek was hassled in a pub by some young and unpleasant people, calling him, among other things, 'grandad'. Point is, she said, very few kids prior to the programme's broadcast, would have been calling people 'grandad' as an insult. After it, plenty would be saying 'you fucking Derek' in very much a Joey Deacon way.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

Erm.. isn't he suppose to be a sympathetic figure, not a figure of fun. The joke is not supposed to be on him.