A Particular Set Of Skills

I caught the first episode of Life's Too Short, the new Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant series.  It's a pseudo-documentary about the life of Warwick Davis, show biz dwarf.  He also helped create the show.  Following the Gervais/Merchant formula, most of the humor comes from the embarrassing situations the lead is put in--his career is going nowhere, his wife wants him out of the house, his accountant is incompetent and so on.  Even his pals Ricky and Stephen don't really want him around, but Warwick tries to put the best face on everything.

It was passable at best.  Perhaps one episode is too small a sample, but (this being British) there are only seven overall, so it better pick up fast.  Seeing Davis, who played an Ewok and starred as Willow, falling on somewhat hard times is a novel premise, but the comedy is so far pretty mild. In fact, by far the funniest stuff in the first show had nothing to do with him--he was merely a bystander as Liam Neeson insisted on practicing improv with Ricky and Steve.