Season Review: Alley Cats Season One
Overview (Spoilers Below):
The series follows the trials and tribulations of a group of feral British cats from all walks of society, who seek companionship while ruminating on everyday life.
Our Take:
Adult animation certainly has a way of exposing the raunchiness of everyday pets or strays. Kids have their chance of witnessing talking pets and their shenanigans in projects like “The Secret Life of Pets”, and now it’s us grown-ups’ turn to ruffle the animals’ furry exteriors. Since then, we’ve been having several shows and movies that depict pets or strays performing all sorts of mature actions as we humans do. Those include “Strays”, “Fixed”, “Housebroken”, and the recent series from Prime Video, “Kevin”, with middling results. So far, “Kevin” is the one show that I was most disappointed with, despite my interest in the “talking animal” concept. This month, Netflix is bringing out its own form of “talking animal shenanigans” from the mind of English comedian Ricky Gervais.
Consisting of six episodes, Alley Cats follows Gus (Gervais) and his feral cat crew on a series of misadventures amidst their gloomy lifestyle. During those tribulations, they discovered a lost kitten (Jo Hartley) and embarked on a quest to return it to its family. I’m not joking when I said that their lives as strays were gloomy. While it contains British slang and adult language not fit for young viewers, Alley Cats surprisingly doesn’t go all out with the adult comedy and wildly raunchy shenanigans. Instead, it takes a more subtle and downbeat approach, focusing on the cats’ experiences with everyday life and helping the kitten prepare for the future. The most notable example is dealing with death, particularly in its second episode, “Havoc”, where Pete, an older cat, is being put down due to his age. It shows that death is inevitable, and it’s important to live each moment in life to the fullest before then.
That alone makes Alley Cats a laidback yet subtly poignant outlook on the trials of life through the eyes of a stray. However, with its focus on maturity over raunchiness, the show could risk alienating those eager for more wild adult shenanigans with the crude animals. Fortunately, the only element that compensates for this change was the cats themselves. At first glance, they may seem to be as feral as their attitudes, but that isn’t the case, as they tend to be generous in their own way, especially towards Kitten. Plus, the voice cast did a surprisingly good job retaining my interest through their chemistry and deadpan humor, including Ricky Gervais as Gus. There were a few moments where their conversations came close to being aimless in the episodic premises. Fortunately, the episode count and short runtimes prevented them from being the most frustrating part of the journey. It lasted for around an hour and a half, around the same length as a movie, so it should make for a breezy watch during the afternoon. If it were eight to twelve episodes long, then its tone would’ve risked overstaying its welcome.
At first, I was prepared for Alley Cats to become another adult animated show involving animals getting into raunchy mishaps and nothing else. However, I was honestly surprised to see that the six-episode series is nothing like the other ones I saw regarding its concept. Through Gervais’s delicate direction and smart script, Alley Cats offers an exploration of life and companionship that’s mature, amusing, and, more importantly, heartfelt. While shorter than I expected, there have been times when the conversations between the characters felt drawn out amid their mission to return a lost kitten home. Thankfully, it wasn’t to the point of becoming a frustrating bore, thanks to its voice cast and British comedy. Assuming you want another reason Ricky Gervais is worth appreciating for his brand of humor, or maybe you’re looking for an adult animated series that’s more on storytelling than countless dick jokes. If that’s the case for both, then Alley Cats is certainly right up your alley.
