Warwick Davis, Ricky Gervais and the big fight over Life's Too Short

Telegraph

16-02-2025

In a recent Bafta video, Warwick Davis reminisced about his best-known roles from over four decades in the entertainment business: Wicket the Ewok from Return of the Jedi, Willow from the George Lucas fantasy, the monstrous Leprechaun from the low-rent horror series, and Professor Flitwick from the Harry Potter films.
On the subject of which characters he'd like to revisit, Davis – who will be honoured with a Bafta Fellowship at the 2025 Bafta Awards ceremony – name-checked himself. Specifically, the fictional Warwick Davis he played in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's comedy, Life's Too Short. 'Everyone wants more Life's Too Short except Ricky Gervais,' said the 55-year-old actor. 'Once he's done something he stops... But, Ricky, I want more and everyone wants more.'
There is a universal affection for Davis, but Life's Too Short – which first aired in November 2011 – was not universally loved. Some viewers and critics were offended by jokes about Davis's dwarfism (Davis is 3ft 6in and has a rare bone growth disorder called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita). There was even a campaign to have the BBC-HBO co-production taken off air.
'It's a shame, really,' Davis said in 2013 about the response. 'I feel offended that people are offended for me. The critics just didn't get it. In the show, we laugh at Warwick because he's an idiot, a nasty piece of work, selfish, he's all those things, he's a little Napoleon!'
The backlash was more about the critical tide turning on Gervais than it was about Davis himself. Reviewers slammed the show for repeating the Gervais and Merchant comedy formula. But watched now, 14 years later, Life's Too Short feels overlooked for how funny it actually is – a show that was small on critical praise but big on laughs.
Davis previously appeared as himself in Extras – playing opposite a sex-obsessed Daniel Radcliffe – and regaled Gervais and Merchant on set with stories about embarrassing mishaps (the kind of thing that would later become the basis for Life's Too Short). Having been offered various reality documentary shows, Davis already had the kernel of an idea and suggested the sitcom to the comedy duo.
'The more we talked to Warwick, the more we could see a unique perspective,' Merchant told The Telegraph in 2011. 'Because we realised we'd never seen a show that dealt with a little person in a way that didn't make them either freakish or magical.'
Like almost all of the celebrity-playing-themselves cameos in Extras, Life's Too Short would be an exercise in Davis lampooning himself. This Warwick character is struggling for acting work – or even a smidgen of recognition – while facing a £250,000 tax bill and a costly divorce. Assisted – if you can call it that – by gormless PA Cheryl (a brilliant Rosamund Hanson), Warwick runs an agency for dwarf actors but nabs the best roles for himself, and uses his position as vice chair at the Society of People of Short Stature to fan his own outsized ego.
For Gervais and Merchant, it was a return to the fake documentary format they'd popularised with The Office. But Life's Too Short was really a combination of The Office and Extras – the format of The Office and the celebrity walk-ins of Extras – while continuing to needle the self-important façade of fame and popularity.
Gervais and Merchant appear as themselves – Davis badgers them for work, divorce advice, and money – and Steve Brody completes his trifecta of useless idiots in Gervais and Merchant shows: a useless talent agent in The Office; a useless letting agent in Extras; and Warwick's useless accountant in Life's Too Short.
Davis was essentially filling the role of Gervais's David Brent from The Office – a self-unaware, adoration-craving berk who blunders into mortifyingly awkward social faux pas. See him making a skin-crawling speech at a Star Wars-themed wedding while dressed as a teddy bear (in lieu of a proper Ewok costume), or claiming that he's very much the Martin Luther King of little people. As critics complained at the time, there's no doubt Davis was doing a bit of a Brent – the intonation, the glances to the camera – but so was a generation of comedy fans (just a bit), who adopted all the Brentisms as part of everyday banter.
There's more to it though: the fake documentary format is about putting a very specific lens on a characters' foibles, and seeing their heightened reactions when they know they're being filmed. The Brent-type became a staple of that comedy format because it plays with characters' egos and self-perception in a very particular way – much like Kerry Mucklowe in This Country and MC Grindah in People Just Do Nothing.
It's true that the celebrities-as-themselves schtick was overdone and formulaic by that point after two series of Extras and multiple seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Life's Too Short was fully aware of it, though. 'My accountant absolutely hated Extras,' Warwick tells Gervais and Merchant in one episode. 'He just thought it was a sitcom where famous people would pop up as themselves.'
In one scene, Liam Neeson turns up and tries his hand at some improvisational comedy, insisting that all his characters have 'full-blown Aids'. It's shamelessly outrageous – there's plenty of low hanging fruit in Life's Too Short's close-to-the-bone gags – but no less hilarious for it.
As with Extras, there are laughs of despair from much further down the celebrity ladder – particularly Les Dennis, Keith Chegwin, and Shaun Williamson discussing the best way to kill themselves. 'Just car in the garage, hose on the exhaust,' says Williamson. 'I've got heated seats so I'll be comfy.'
One of the best cameos we don't see or even hear – it's just a phone call from Rupert Grint ('The ginger one from Harry Potter' as Warwick calls him), who wants an invite to Warwick's house-warming party. Warwick is desperate for celebrities to attend but lies to put Grint off. 'He's a lovely bloke, but you don't want Grint at your party,' says Warwick. He resorts to hiring Cat Deeley for his party instead, then lies about being in a relationship with her. 'This day couldn't get any worse,' says Warwick after he's found out – cue Les Dennis vomiting over the kitchen floor.
There were complaints from some viewers about scenes involving Johnny Depp, in which Depp stands Warwick in a toilet and calls him 'evil toilet dwarf'. In other episodes, Warwick has to crawl through a dog-flap and stand inside a bin because Helena Bonham Carter can't stand to look at him.
Kristina Gray, whose son was born with achondroplasia – the most common cause of dwarfism – told The Guardian that the jokes 'make a mockery of the discrimination that little people face daily'. Gray was part of a campaign to have Life's Too Short taken off TV. Writer and activist Eugene Grant, who has achondroplasia, disagreed that it should be banned but argued that 'in the spirit of free expression, such depictions need to be challenged'.
As a man of average height who is not affected directly, it is absolutely not for me to say whether Life's Too Short is offensive or not. Davis himself, however, considered it just 'incidental' that the character is short. 'It just happens that I'm playing him.' The show was about 'a man with a small man complex', Gervais argued. He added: 'We haven't got an actor and put shoes on their knees and made them walk around doing jokes about being small.' 'He tried it,' quipped Davis.
Life's Too Short was having it both ways, really. There are some wickedly funny pratfalls at the expense of Davis's height. In fact, his knack for slapstick is one of the show's revelations: Warwick falling feet first into a toilet ('Ah, f------ pissy sock!') or falling off a restaurant chair and grabbing up all the table cloth in a frantic backwards grasp, like something from a Looney Tunes cartoon. He falls off the chair while trying to impress a woman of regular height – because he's upset by the presumption that he wouldn't stand a chance with her – and shuns an actual girlfriend, Amy (Kiruna Stamell), who has dwarfism, in the process.
Davis explained that some of the pratfalls and gags were based on real incidents and prejudices. In one scene, for instance, Kerry Godliman films him in the street – not because he's famous (much to his annoyance) but because she's just amused by him. 'Sometimes, people ask if they can take a picture,' Davis has said. 'I say, 'sure'. So they take the picture. And then they say, 'So, what do you do for a living?' They haven't recognised me as an actor – they want a picture simply because I'm a little person.'
The response to Life's Too Short was caught up in more general criticisms of Ricky Gervais' button-pushing material. The comedian was becoming bogged down in the issue of offence in comedy and – just weeks before Life's Too Short debuted – Gervais was at the centre in a Twitter row over him using the word 'mong'. Digging his heels in at first, he was criticised by fellow comedians and disability groups. The controversy was referenced in publicity and reviews of the show.
Gervais and Merchant, however, have always done superb endings, as seen in the sentimental climaxes of The Office, Extras, and Cemetery Junction. Life's Too Short finished with an hour-long, big-hearted finale in March 2013. In the special, Warwick and Val Kilmer search for investors to get Willow 2 off the ground – though Kilmer just wants the cash so he can gorge on spaghetti bolognese and hotel mini bars – and Warwick puts Les Dennis, Keith Chegwin, and Shaun Williamson together as a cabaret triple-act, giving them a new lease of life.
Davis would credit Life's Too Short for opening industry doors for him – doors that had remained closed to him for years – even if critics were sniffy about it.
'It's holding a mirror to people, and makes them think about their attitudes, and I think that made the critics uncomfortable,' said Davis. 'At the end of the day, though, it's not about the critics – it's about the audience. And they all seemed to love it.'