Four Lives proves Stephen Merchant has finally overtaken Ricky Gervais

In 1997 Ricky Gervais hired Stephen Merchant, 13 years younger than him, to be his assistant on XFM. In all the years since, through all the programmes and prizes and interviews and controversies, through all their work together, the highs and the Life’s Too Shorts, the dynamic hasn’t wavered. Gervais is the cocksure firstborn to Merchant’s nerdy younger brother. Gervais the brash, attention-seeking frontman, Merchant the rhythm section. Gervais starred as David Brent, Merchant popped up with a cameo as the “big lanky google-eyed freak”, Oggy, the Oggmonster. The writing might have been collaborative, but it was clear who was in charge. Ricky’s the sorcerer, Steve the apprentice.

They’re both back on screen. Gervais has a new third series of After Life, the Netflix comedy about a grieving widower he phones in once a year. Before Christmas, Merchant wrote, directed and starred in BBC crime caper The Outlaws. Last week, he followed it up with a wonderfully sinister starring role as the serial killer Stephen Port in Four Lives. It’s an intriguing moment for both of them.

After the triumph of The Office, it was Gervais who trundled off to Hollywood. Gervais who starred in Night of the Museum and The Invention of Lying. Gervais who wore a little Britney Spears headset mic and cracked gags about Anne Frank. Gervais who wrote his episode of The Simpsons. Gervais who hosted the Golden Globes and mocked Mel Gibson’s drinking. It was a fawning kind of irreverence. Although he paid lip service to hating the circus, he gave every impression he was rolling around in Beverly Hills like a hippo in the mud.

Merchant didn’t do that stuff. Or if he did, he kept it to himself. He had no interest in winding people up for the sake of it. He told us himself, in a New York Times interview: “[Gervais] has an urge to push the boundaries and to provoke a response from the audience. I would much rather be part of the gang. I don’t want to laugh at the gang – I want the gang to not beat me up.”

Merchant didn’t dress as Jesus Christ for the cover of Rolling Stone, or go on Esquire as Muhammad Ali dressed as Saint Sebastian, arrows protruding from his chest like cocktail sticks in a Christmas orange. I doubt he was asked, but you can tell what his answer would have been. He didn’t bang on about atheism or animal rights as if he was the first bloke in history to have considered these issues. Their different approaches mean they are held to different standards. When Gervais goes off moaning about offence, it’s a trending topic. If Merchant says similar things, as he has done in previous interviews, it raises scarcely an eyebrow.

Traditionally, neither has been at his best when untethered from the other. Left to his own devices, Gervais has made Derek and After Life, which even their most devoted fans – and there are plenty – must concede is not the work for which he’ll be remembered. Merchant has bogged it alone, too. If you are a Merchant novitiate, I can’t advise beginning with Hello Ladies, his HBO sitcom that was cancelled after a single series.

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Still, we have long suspected that Merchant might be the real comic brains of the outfit. In their radio shows, the closest they have come to an equal footing performance-wise, it is Merchant who has all the best lines. (Well, him and Karl Pilkington, who nobody has suspected of being the brains of the outfit.) The orthodox thinking about The Office and Extras was that Gervais pushed the boundaries of good taste while Merchant brought the heart. If Gervais was leaving a woman in a wheelchair on a landing during a fire drill, Merchant was Dawn and Tim’s redemption snog.

So it’s not a surprise that the 6ft 7in tortoise has finally overtaken the hare. Compared to the daring and originality of Gervais’s earlier work, After Life often feels safe. It’s set in the countryside but obviously filmed in Hampstead, which the more critically inclined might take as a metaphor for Gervais’ diminishing ambitions. In an interview with The Guardian in December, widely shared in part thanks to a typo that called him “Icky”, Gervais made the same points about offence and criticism he has been rehearsing for the best part of 20 years. If he still has a restless creative spirit, he is disguising it well.

Merchant, meanwhile, has been burnishing his reputation with two of his best pieces of work yet. He has always been more serious about acting than his partner. While Gervais does one or two things brilliantly, Merchant is more of an all-rounder, a team player rather than a soloist. The Outlaws is a brilliant comic thriller about a group of miscreants who meet during community service. It was original, clever, didn’t rely on swearing or provocation for its laughs and created a cast of interesting, likeable characters. In Four Lives, he displayed a whole other side to his talents as a man who murdered four young men in 2014-2015 after meeting them on gay sex apps. All the things he usually uses for comic effect were turned into quiet menace. This wasn’t just Merchant being a version of Merchant, as we have seen so often, it was real acting, of a subtlety and power Gervais has never managed. Who’s the real sorcerer these days? Life might be too short, but careers can be long enough for a few surprises.