Possession; Alley Cats

“Possession is the first full-length work from Karla Crome, so far best known for her acting roles in Misfits, You, Me and the Apocalypse and most recently in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. It is a potent conjuring of the pervasive, enduring evils and toxicities of colonialism. It’s a powerful look at how unadmitted sins and guilt manifest themselves and whether justice for some crimes – such sprawling, normalised, heinous crimes that you begin almost to warm to those who act out of simple depravity and malevolence – can ever be done. Are reparations possible? Where does responsibility begin and end? What is better: ancestral spirit vengeance being visited upon the guilty’s descendants, or the parlaying of a boss’s modern exploitation of your skin colour for “optics” into money and promotion?”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“The first line of Daphne Du Maurier’s Gothic novel, with its ominous hint of subconscious horrors to come, is irresistible. Possession was channelling Daphne from the opening shot of a decaying mansion on the hill. The backdrop was Jamaica, not Cornwall, but the atmosphere was unmistakable. And this five-part drama, originally titled Inheritance, doesn’t disappoint. It pulsates with disturbing imagery, some of it subtly unsettling, some of it as chilling as a bad dream come to life.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Writer Karla Crome keeps the energy up by flitting between two timelines: Jamaica in the 1700s and now. In the historical scenes, Bel Powley has a striking role as a cold-blooded heiress, capable of astonishing cruelty towards the plantation’s slaves. Sheldon Shepherd is charismatic as the mysterious Cudjoe. Mbatha-Raw gives a committed performance even when the script gets silly. The message, obviously, is that slavery was bad and that colonialism had repercussions which are being felt to this day. That £50m inheritance is a vehicle for exploring the idea of reparations. Unfortunately, in the midst of this serious subject matter, the horror scenes can come over as unintentionally funny.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“Certainly the debut screenwriter Crome isn’t short of fresh ideas, the script ambitiously tying together big themes of race, identity and colonial legacy in a manner that eventually loses its way as the title becomes literal and characters stagger about with possessed minds. In fairness, you could probably safely say this is the only thriller you’ll see this year that attempts to combine jump scares — and yes, there are a few of those — with a thought-provoking comment on reparations. Because obeah may be creating havoc, but it’s not really the enemy here, rather it’s a cultural force of justice echoing down the centuries.”
James Jackson, The Times

“If it were possible to speak to Ricky Gervais with honesty – the sort of obscure, marrow-deep honesty you can usually only find with a polygraph machine and zoo-grade barbiturates – I would be genuinely fascinated to ask him one question: what does he really think of Alley Cats? Watching the abrasive, smug, and completely mirthless new Netflix cartoon from the British comedy titan, I found it genuinely impossible to tell. Is this the work of a man who has lost all creative mooring, awash in his own self-belief? Or is it the work of a canny grifter-cynic, a man who has watched audiences lap up all his crudest, hokiest impulses in projects like Derek and After Life, and thought, “let’s just give the people what they want”?”
Louis Chilton, The Independent

“You can see what the six-episode animated series about a gang of homeless cats wants to be. It wants to be an exquisitely observed, agonising, heartbreaking, hilarious examination of the human condition. But it can’t be bothered. Easier by far, especially as it’s on Netflix and unshackled from mainstream broadcasters’ rules about swearing, to call everyone a C-word and sigh at the inevitability/sweet release of death every five minutes. Nihilism – gotcha! So dark, man, so edgy!”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Full disclosure: I am a Ricky Gervais fangirl who loves his work for animal welfare, thinks The Office was genius, Extras was genius and After Life was genius, in that order of merit. Alley Cats is not in their league, but, as the owner of said narky cat, I love that he uses it to show how casually cruel humans can be to animals (a child is punished by the cats for his cruelty). But it’s funnier when it isn’t being juvenile. Such as when the pervert cat says he “f***s a rat”.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Hosting the Golden Globes a few years ago, Ricky Gervais poked fun at the Cats film by quoting a critic who had called it “the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs”. Funny how life turns out. Now Gervais has made a show that is the worst thing to happen to cats since Cats.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“You’ve heard of the manosphere? Well, somehow, via the medium of cartoon cats lounging about in a derelict house watching TV, Gervais has created the Catosphere, made up of a gang of miserable, offensive, toxic cats who have nothing better to do than spout their diatribe all day. This is just an aimless Ricky Gervais podcast channeled through cartoon felines.”
Emily Baker, The i