New Ricky Gervais Netflix special Armageddon shocks

Ricky Gervais is jumping to the top of the Netflix feed again with his new hour-long Christmas comedy special Armageddon.

Divisive comic Ricky Gervais’ new hour-long Christmas comedy special has audiences both celebrating and criticising his jokes.

Armageddon is Gervais’s third such show for Netflix. It toured live from 2022 to 2023 to record-setting international sales.

In the special, Gervais made light of “sex, death, paedophilia, race, religion, disability, free speech, global warming, the holocaust, and Elton John”.

The special was released on Christmas Day in Australia, and currently has 65 per cent audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

One negative review for the special from the Telegraph received several comments on X defending the show.

“Just finished Armageddon and loved it,” one user said, “especially the comments in the last 2 minutes about what being ‘woke’ should and shouldn’t mean”.

Daniel Howell, YouTuber and comedian, talked about how despite talking about how people were afraid of words, Gervais had just been paid by Netflix to complain about the word “woke” for an hour.

Ricky Gervais performing his latest Netflix special, Armageddon. Picture: Netflix

“Truly he is the most voiceless victim,” he joked.

In the recorded special, Gervais opened by discussing the backlash to his previous Netflix special, SuperNature, joking that he saw many people saying: “you can’t say that!”

“You can,” he replied.

“I did. Yeah, the inevitable backlash, which made it the most watched special of the year. So, I’ve learned my lesson.”

Several comments on a Ricky Gervais-themed subreddit complained about reused jokes that they had noticed in other performances and podcasts of his.

One comment criticised the special, saying “Anti-‘woke’ comedy makes sense because 1. It generates free publicity in right-wing tabloids. 2. If you say you didn’t find it funny, they’ll just accuse you of being ‘woke’ or offended. The idea that the material is weak will never be accepted as a criticism. You’re offended, whether you are or not.”

Gervais posted on Boxing Day that judging by initial numbers, Armageddon would be his “biggest special ever”.

Each of Ricky Gervais’ previous Netflix specials has also received backlash from critics and viewers, despite great commercial success and continued popularity. Picture: Valerie Macon/AFP

“This means Netflix have to pay me even more for my next one and I can give even more money to animals. It’s a good system”.

Gervais spent some time in the most recent special making fun of social politics, such as the word “woke” and the nature of changing social language.

He followed this with jokes about illegal immigrants, Vikings and their history with rape, and the stupidity of the human race for things such as academic courses studying Taylor Swift.

He joked that his generation would be the first that future generations would be jealous of, and that he would purposefully be environmentally wasteful to doom the next generation, “just so in 40 years time, Greta Thunberg has to sh*t out a window.”

Gervais’ jokes turned to the pointlessness of prayer and the uselessness of the majority of the population, as well as the use of the “r-slur”.

Ricky Gervais in a promotional photo for his first special, Humanity. Picture: Netflix

The special had already generated some blowback before it was even released due to a petition to remove the special over jokes Mr Gervais made about terminally ill children in this segment.

“They have no effect on me,” the former Golden Globes host said about the critics.

“They don’t count. They’re hecklers.”

As his special continued, Mr Gervais talked about whitewashing historical figures, joked about the life expectancy of the population and made a joke about babies with AIDS, which was used as an analogy not to take comedy too personally.

Ricky Gervais receiving a Guinness World Record for his special, Armageddon, receiving the highest gross for a single stand-up performance ever. Picture: Guinness World Records

Then, he began to talk about pedophilia and Michael Jackson’s sexual allegations, and then made several jokes about China, such as that there were not enough children for pedophiles in the country.

He complained about cultural appropriation as “the latest no-no”, then gave various examples of what people can’t do and say because of it.

ricky gervais says ‘people evolved to be scared of words’ and netflix pay him to spend an entire hour complaining about the word woke

truly he is the most voiceless victim

— Daniel Howell (@danielhowell) December 25, 2023

“Black people, they can use the N-word. We invented that!” he joked before discussing critical race theory.

Critical race theory argues that racism is systemic and has shaped modern-day society. “Critical race theory says that all white people are racist,” Gervais said, before leading into another joke.

After talking about Amazon, disabled children and AI, Gervais discussed the website doesthedogdie.com, which is used to identify potential trigger warnings in films, and joked about their pages on movies such as Titanic, Old Yeller and Schindler’s List.

Gervais warned a joke was “too offensive” to be told, but then proceeded to tell it anyway: “OK, a Chinese paedophile goes after a little Chinese kid and goes do you want a puppy? And the kid goes I’m not hungry.”

As the special finished, he thanked the audience for attending, and for the money they’d been raising for 11 animal charities, now estimated at nearly UK£2 million (AU$3.7 million).

As he thanked the audience, he said that people cannot choose their sense of humour, and that humour is designed “to laugh at bad sh*t, to get us through it.”

He closed with an argument that he is traditionally woke; unless it means “being a puritanical, authoritarian bully who gets people fired for an honest opinion, or even a fact. Then no, I’m not woke, f*ck that.”

Originally published as New Ricky Gervais Netflix special Armageddon shocks