The Definitive Guide to Comedy
More like the greatest affable American, am I right? That’s how great Nate Bargatze is, and the COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t slow him down from writing and performing a new Netflix hour. Even if it meant performing outside, where helicopters whirred overhead. As I wrote in Decider: As much as I …
Brian Regan is a great comedian. Has been for decades now. His new hour, out now on Netflix, is pretty great, too. It’s just. It’s just, well, so baffling that Regan filmed his new special, On The Rocks, to a packed audience in the middle of this pandemic, and pretended …
When the late great Patrice O’Neal’s fiancee, Von Decarlo, first pursued making a documentary about her beloved comedian in 2015, the project was called Better Than You, and raised some $129,624 on IndieGogo. Those backers are thanked in the end credits of Killing Is Easy, the 91-minute finished doc, which …
The first season of They Ready featured comedians Tiffany Haddish worked with in the trenches of the L.A. comedy scene, and vowed to bring them up behind her. The second season of They Ready, filmed in the pandemic, offered shorter sets from more established comedians who were more than ready: …
Peacock, NBCUniversal’s new streaming platform, has introduced it’s first exclusive stand-up comedy special, and that honor went to Maz Jobrani, with an hour he filmed pre-pandemic in Dubai, then supplemented with quarantine monologues from 2020. Performing in the Middle East means adapting to a myriad of new cultural and religious …
If Rachel Brosnahan’s Marvelous Mrs. Maisel telling truth to 1960 wasn’t enough for you, how about the real Brosnahan and Phoebe Robinson getting together a bunch of funny women to deliver a final eulogy for 2020? That’s the premise and conceit for Yearly Departed on Amazon Prime Video. Brosnahan said …
An opening sketch set in her dressing room finds Hughes delivering a pep talk in the mirror, in which she reminds herself, “Because you are comedy Beyonce. Yes, you are.” She also compares herself to the late great Richard Pryor, and then to current megastar Kevin Hart. The gag ends …
I can respect Andrew Schulz’s hustle and still not enjoy this game he’s playing. The way it’s all structured, almost breathlessly dense, works for and against it comedically. You might miss a lot just trying to follow along. There’s a lot of wordplay, with graphics popping up and gone in …
A mash-up of Zoom shows? That’s the special? As I wrote in Decider: Das’s premise doesn’t seem on the face like it’ll offer much. He asked Zoom viewers each night what’s the first thing they’d do when the world re-opens, and then riffed off of their answers. And then you …
I dare say I enjoyed it, mostly? Jeff Dunham acknowledged he’d been touring constantly for the past 48 years before the pandemic forced him to take a time out. As I wrote in Decider… Perhaps the layoff did him some good. It certainly made him more likable in my eyes …
