Short shrift for Davis show critics

Life’s Too Short, written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Warwick Davis, has divided critical opinion, with some branding it offensive, uncomfortable, or even exploitative. Warwick spoke to Disability Now to passionately defend the aims and outcomes of the show

Three years in development, and eighteen months in production, the journey from idea to screen for Ricky Gervais’s latest BBC sitcom has been far from short.

Critical reaction to the show has been divided, with some praising its refreshing approach to the portrayal of disability, while others have complained that the programme is exploitative, and promotes the notion of disabled people as objects of mockery.

Warwick explains that he believes much of the negativity surrounding the show stems from the fact that it covers new ground, and ventures into territory not usually covered in such a high-profile fashion.

“I think we confront issues that are normally considered taboo, and the fact that they’re taboo is that they’re not confronted ever. I think it’s important that things like that are brought out in the open and perhaps create intelligent debate and discussion.

“Anything that Ricky does is kind of like Marmite, you’re either going to love it or hate it. That’s for a start. Often people want to stand on the moral high ground a little, reviewing a programme such as this because we’re in this age of being overly politically correct about things, and I think often nobody wants to go and put their foot in it or they look down on the show rather than get on a level with it.”

However, it is when addressing the issue of “exploitation” that Warwick gives his most vigorous and passionate defence of the series, from a social, creative and personal perspective.

“If you look at the series, I think some people are getting a little carried away and slightly getting the wrong end of the stick,” he says.

“This character that I play, ‘Warwick Davis’, it’s sort of incidental that he’s short really.

“He’s just a guy that things aren’t going well for, he’s in a very, very low place career-wise and in his personal life, and he’s a desperate, desperate man who ends up making very poor decisions, and being quite a monster because of that situation.

“At the same time, if you take the fact that he’s short into the equation, he’s got ‘small man complex’ – he’s not thoroughly come to terms with being short, he’s just not dealing with it very well. And we end up laughing at the way he builds himself up and the world comes crashing down around him - that’s what we want to see, in the show, in his character.

“We also laugh at the way that other people are around him and the other characters in the show. These situations where I’m getting reactions from other people, this is how you can be treated when you’re little. I think it’s important and I think that’s inherently what Ricky and Stephen understood.”

Some commentators, particularly online, have even gone so far as to suggest that Gervais and Merchant have taken advantage of Davis.

Warwick says: “Why people can take exception to the fact that I’m a little person and that I somehow have no controI and co-operated in doing this against my will somehow, that I’m not complicit in the whole thing – I’m a co-creator of the series!

“It all goes back to this whole idea of PC and people just really being concerned to put their neck on the line and understand that it’s just a piece of entertainment, purely that’s what it is.”

Some of the biggest criticisms have come from the restricted growth community itself.

“They haven’t been terribly over-impressed, but then they never have been particularly impressed with any short actor,” he says witheringly.

“The idea of any little people being involved in the entertainment industry is not something that they particularly subscribe to. You know, fair play, that’s their opinion and everyone’s entitled to that, but I think that we as little people should be moving into a society where we are integrated within the society and not sort of separating ourselves out as a minority group.”

• Life’s Too Short is on BBC1, Thursday nights at 9pm.