would be in the show, as well as posting a link to a YouTube video of him and Davis filmed on the set of Life's Too Short. Earlier in that week he had blogged about how "Matt Groening's favourite character from The Office will make a cameo in Life's Too Short", along with an on-set photograph of actor Ewen MacIntosh who played Big Keith in The Office. Principal filming ran for eight weeks ending on 22 July 2011. Gervais and Davis attended a question and answer session to discuss the making of Life's Too Short at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2011. A half-hour-long documentary, The Making of Life's Too Short, aired on BBC Two and BBC HD on 5 November 2011, prior to the start of the series run. After the first series finished airing, Gervais confirmed via Twitter that a second series had been commissioned for early 2013. Gervais joked on his blog, "We are thinking of going straight to the Xmas Special. Lazier and lazier. Now it's down to ONE series and a special. Ha ha." The series finale premiered on 5 July 2013 in the US on HBO. Home media Life's Too Short was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 22 October 2012 in the UK, 7 November 2012 in Australia and on 15 January 2013 in the US. The Special was released onto DVD in the UK on 2 February 2015. Reception UK critical response In the United Kingdom the first series received mostly mixed reviews. Rachel Tarley, of Metro, described the show as "tripe" while David Butcher of the Radio Times introduced his review of episode six with "another week, another queasy mix of comedy and unpleasantness." Many reviews were deeply critical of the writing – Gwilym Mumford of The Guardian felt that writers Gervais and Merchant were "on autopilot", referring to the programme as "strikingly lazy stuff, little more than a predictable checklist of taboos and social faux pas", and journalist for The Independent Robert Epstein likewise branded it "shoddily derivative" and potentially degrading. T.J. Barnard, writing for WhatCulture, called the show "a mess. It's aimless, indulgent, self-plagiarizing and cold." However, Metros review of episode 7 was slightly more positive saying "Life's Too Short bowed out tonight with an episode that was more than marginally better than the six previous offerings, not only was the plot stronger than in previous weeks, but