The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Of all of the comedy comeback specials in 2018, Ellen DeGeneres delivers the most fascinating and funniest take. In case you’re keeping track, the other stand-up comedians who returned to the stage after a long break (10 years or more) with new hours for Netflix this year included Chris Rock, …
Pete Holmes is one of only two people who have called me “Sean L.” in everyday conversation, and it makes perfect sense. Holmes is a comedian who loves the sounds of words. Sean L. becomes Shonnelle, which bequeaths me an alter-ego. In his previous stand-up comedy specials, Holmes has invited …
Vir Das got America’s attention with his first Netflix special, last year’s Abroad Understanding. Filming it in a small theater in New York City, then cutting it together with footage of him performing the same material in an arena in India, we learned that Das is a comedian to listen …
I’ve long held a love/ambivalence about the comedian and actor Russell Brand. On the one hand, Brand holds a world of ideas within his head and a dazzling gift for sharing his ideas and prompting bigger conversations about life and love and everything else. On the other, Brand’s ego and …
Adam McKay won the Academy Award for best screenplay for his adaptation of The Big Short. His newest film at the end of 2018 is VICE, McKay’s darkly satiric yet mostly true retelling of the life and career of Dick Cheney. He has come a long way since his Second …
Joe Wong has performed on the Ed Sullivan stage before to perform on David Letterman’s Late Show, and returned this past week to tell Stephen Colbert’s audience a thing or two about China, immigration and walls. Roll the clip!
Pete Lee is racking up the visits to Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, with four performances in a year’s span. Lee thinks being called “extra” is a good thing, even though he only grew up to be half a man, and had to come out straight to his parents. Roll the …
Katherine Ryan is Canadian, so of course she knows how great Celine Dion is, and in this performance on Wednesday’s Late Late Show with James Corden, she explains what Dion does right, what Melania Trump did wrong, and how British television offers a brutally naked alternative to dating. Roll the …
Carol Burnett has won lifetime achievement awards from the Screen Actors Guild, the Peabody Awards, the Mark Twain Prize, Kennedy Center Honors and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Now she’ll get her own award in her own name from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The Golden Globes will launch The …
Sarah Cooper could have enjoyed a lucrative career in tech, only she didn’t enjoy Google as much as she did making jokes about it. She began performing stand-up in 2010, and in 2013, saw a blog post she wrote about how to look smart in meetings go viral and land …
