Ricky Gervais thanks fans for making After Life the most watched British comedy in the world

30 June 2020, 12:36 | Updated: 9 July 2020, 12:33

Ricky Gervais at the After Life For Your Consideration Event in March 2019. Picture: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images)

The creator and star of the Netflix series has taken to social media to thank his fans for the milestone and for their continued response to the hit show.

Ricky Gervais has thanked his fans for making After Life the most watched British comedy in the world.

The hugely popular Netflix series - which sees the comedian play widower Tony - released its second season during the coronavirus pandemic and topped the streaming site's charts. Now it appears to have reached another impressive milestone, becoming the most popular comedy across the globe.

Taking to Instagram, Gervais shared an image with the caption: "I have no Emmy campaign for #AfterLife. No press ads, no billboards, nothing. I didn't have any of those things for the launch either, but fans of the show came through for me as usual and made it the most watched British comedy in the world. And that's better than any award."

See his post below:

View this post on Instagram

I have no Emmy campaign for #AfterLife. No press ads, no billboards, nothing. I didn't have any of those things for the launch either, but fans of the show came through for me as usual and made it the most watched British comedy in the world. And that's better than any award.

A post shared by Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) on Jun 29, 2020 at 2:08pm PDT

In the previous post, the Office creator wrote: "Thanks for all your lovely tweets about #AfterLife still flooding in, particularly all of your own stories of grief and loss and how you identified with the themes of the show. Stay strong".

It's not the first time Gervais has opened up about the overwhelming response to the series.

Speaking to Radio X's Danny Wallace about the impact the show has had, Gervais revealed that he received over 300 letters in the first week of the first season being aired, and he still gets people coming up to him and opening up about their grief now.

"Genuinely. I’ve never had a reaction like it," he mused. "And I don’t just mean the size of the reaction, as that could be a reflection of the fact Netflix has £170 million subscribers worldwide, which is mind-blowing really when you think about It [...] but it was the emotional response.

"My agent on the first week got 300 letters. Now that is really rare, where people are bothering to write letters, and they were telling their own story, so it wasn’t a tweet, it wasn’t a thumbs up."

Watch our interview with him here:

Ricky Gervais chats to Danny Wallace

He added: "People come up to me on the street. Usually it’s, ‘I loved the show,’ or ‘Give it to them at the Golden Globes’ and now they come up and approach me and say, ‘I lost my brother three weeks before I watched it and you think, ‘Oh my god. Everyone’s grieving.

"Everyone in the world is grieving about something all the time and the older you get the more you’ve got to grieve about... And I really didn’t think of it as a document about grief.”