Has Ricky Gervais gone all serious?

The trailer to 'Cemetery Junction' suggests that its writer-director is suppressing his funny bone.

A new trailer has been released for 'Cemetery Junction', the first film to be written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the comedy partnership that brought us 'The Office' and 'Extras'. It looks at the lives of three young guys in 1970s provincial Britain and the choices they make that might affect the rest of their lives. Gervais and Merchant have said that the film plays on memories of their own childhoods.

Perhaps most obvious from the trailer is a lack of laughs. But that's not surprising. The duo told Time Out on the set of the film last summer that they were aiming for a souped-up version of familiar British screen realism. 'We’ve noticed that a lot of British cinema embraces the loser and goes for gritty realism, which can be great, but not a very nice ride,' Gervais told Time Out's comedy editor, Tim Arthur. ‘We wanted some of that blue-collar truth, but with good-looking people and good lighting.’





Also, read our report from the set of 'Cemetery Junction'