Ricky Gervais in Derek, Channel 4, Review For the past few days, opprobrium has rained down upon the head of Ricky Gervais for daring to make Derek, a comedy drama pilot for Channel 4, in which he plays a learning disabled man who works at an old people's home. It appears on the surface as if Gervais has picked on one of society's most vulnerable individuals. Derek is presented as of low mental acuity, with impaired language skills and a facial mannerism. He also has an unrealisable crush on the home's duty nurse Hannah (Kerry Godliman) - "I'm probably going to marry her." Gervais would certainly be aware of the danger of setting up Derek as a figure of fun. Born in 1960, the comedian would have been 14 when the Horizon documentary Joey, about cerebral palsy sufferer Joey Deacon appeared on TV. Deacon, who had spent most of his life in an institution, despite being of normal intelligence, was able to become a published author. But, after a Blue Peter appearance in 1981, his mannerisms and speech difficulties became widely mocked and imitated. Gervais has made a career out of testing the boundaries of what is and isn't okay to laugh at. From David Brent's unthinking racism in The Office to Clive Owen's misogyny in Extras ("If I'd just slept with that, I wouldn't throw the food on the floor, I'd throw it in her face"), Gervais specialises in confronting us with situations that are at once appalling and very funny - cringe comedy, as it is sometimes known. But in Derek, Gervais seems to have found a character that he relates to deeply. When Derek found a worm, tried to give it a drink in the pond in the garden of the nursing home, and wondered, in his child-like speech: "Is that its head? I give it both ends," it simply didn't come across as mocking. It was a way of looking at the world that was both joyful and touching. And, when Derek's favourite resident Joan fell asleep, and he touched her curls gently: "I likes her hair, it's fluffy," you could almost feel the perm bounce against your fingers. Once again, Gervais employed a fake documentary format, allowing Derek to describe his world view directly to camera, inter-cutting it with scenes from the home. Derek's philosophy - "I likes old people, they're kind and they're not going to be around forever so be nice to them" - was contrasted with that of the morose caretaker Douglas (Karl Pilkington), who viewed the home's residents with gloom: "I don't know at what point you can say life's ended." In Hannah, Gervais had also created another of his sympathetic female characters (the most underrated aspect of his writing), who are aware that life is not quite working out as they might have hoped - "I'm not in a relationship, not married" - but remain pragmatic and cheerful. When, later in the episode, Joan died, Derek remembered her saying: "Kindness is magic Derek." Just writing that seems to have worked a strange spell on Gervais. Derek was, at its heart, nothing if not kind. To follow Telegraph TV on Twitter click here