Ricky Gervais is making a comedy-drama for Netflix about a suicidal middle-aged man.

‘It’s a guy whose wife has died and he is in the depths of depression and he nearly kills himself,’ Gervais said of his role in the six-part series

‘But the reason he doesn’t is that the dog is hungry, so that saves him for a while. He thinks about his crappy job, he works for a free newspaper.’

Ironically Gervais made his comments to a free newspaper – the George Osborne-edited London Evening Standard.

The comic said that the series, which he is still working on, was to be called Roll On Death, but he decided to drop the title because it was ‘too comic’.

‘I don’t know whether it’s a comedy or more of a six-part story,’ he told the paper. ‘It’s like a series that’s adapted from a novel, I just haven’t written the novel.’

Speaking further about his character, Gervais added: ‘The only thing that gets him through it is, "I’m going to commit suicide one day but until then I’m going to do exactly what I want. I’m going to stop being a doormat and say exactly what I fucking want"… he doesn’t give a fuck, they can’t hurt him any more.

‘This new-found thing liberates him. It’s dark but it’s funny and he gets embroiled with people he would never mix with in the underworld. It’s like he lives two lives.’

The cast will include comic Tom Basden, who appeared in David Brent: Life On The Road, and Tony Way, whose credit range from Game of Thrones to Murder In Successville, Zapped and The Life Of Rock with Brian Pern.

Published: 4 Oct 2017