The Definitive Guide to Comedy
In the late 1990s, between the comedy booms, perhaps the hottest live stand-up show in Los Angeles happened every week on a Tuesday night. That’s when Guy Torry began hosting Phat Tuesdays at The Comedy Store, introducing black comedy for black audiences into the lily-white-dominated landscape of show business — …
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 …
Amazon Prime Video has ordered a year in review comedy special to be hosted by Phoebe Robinson, executive produced by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel star Rachel Brosnahan, and written by Bess Kalb. Yearly Departed will premiere this winter. “I’m ready to put 2020 on fire like I’m barbecuing at a …
It’d be both easy and a gross oversimplification for me to merely say, I enjoy Jim Gaffigan’s older stuff better, as if I’m a hipster employee in a record store in the 1990s. So I’ll focus on the positives and play up the things that make Gaffigan’s 2020 double-special for …
The encore of Gina Brillon’s first Amazon Original comedy special is more powerful and moving than what precedes it, as she reveals who influenced her to even dream about comedy in the first place, and what it means to fulfill her dreams. Everything else is very much 2020. 2020 is …
Jimmy O. Yang went from Silicon Valley on HBO to Space Force on Netflix. That’s a great deal! That’s not the Good Deal he’s talking about in his first stand-up special, though. He’s more interested in basic stereotypes and exploring his fame. Too much of this hour, though, covers territory …
Back when he made an original docuseries for Netflix in 2013, Russell Peters Vs. The World, Peters talked in one of the episodes about how he believed happier comedians made for bad comedy. “What the hell are we so happy about? We’re not here to spread joy. We’re spreading joy through …
Rob Delaney provided an early example of how comedians could become big stars thanks solely to Twitter. But it wasn’t until Delaney left America for Britain that he found success on the telly, thanks to Catastrophe. That brilliant comedy starring Delaney and Sharon Horgan aired for four six-episode seasons on …
Jayde Adams began her career in drag bars in Britain with an uncanny Adele impersonation. Her comedy career has gone big across the pond since her Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2016, and now she joins a group of Brits with specials on Amazon Prime. As I wrote previously: Why so …
About that title. Ilana Glazer means it literally, telling the audience early in her first stand-up comedy special that The Planet Is Burning, adding: “and the mean dinosaurs in office just don’t seem to mind.” But that’s not the central message, nor the main focus of her solo hour. As …
