We have a thread on Movies people have seen recently and one on Television series, but I could not find one on Comedy/Stand Up specials. There are many available on the different streaming services, and while they are usually recent ones, they do have older ones as well.
Are there any comedy stand up specials that you have seen recently? Where did you watch it? And what did you think?
//i\\
I will go ahead and start by responding to my own original post:
Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was… (2024) Streams on Netflix. This felt like almost like a church service with a lot of cursing. He goes through what happened to him in 2023 when he had stroke, so it is part stand up, part heartfelt confessions and part musical performance. It was rather different from most stand up I have seen, and it reminded me of just how talented and funny he is.
//i\\
Watched a few of the Nate Bargatze specials on Netflix. He’s a pretty funny guy with a great deadpan delivery. A little goes a long way however as he has several specials on Netflix and if watching them all they get somewhat formulaic.
Also at the insistence of my son watched a couple of the Gabriel Iglesias specials. Totally not my thing. Just very obvious humor and the guy is kinda full of himself. Didn’t laugh at any of it.
Watched Danny Bhoy live at the Sydney Opera House (2007) over the weekend in preparation for his upcoming tour. A Scottish comedian who is well-known in UK and Australia, not sure if he’s familiar to North Americans.
Really good show - some of the content focussed on his Australian experience but probably still quite accessible. He’s very sharp, and the content is good observational humour and story-telling. Not out to shock, says fuck a bit. His persona is of being a very nice guy. Hopefully the years have been kind to his act.
Anthony Jeselnik: Bones and All, 2024 – he’s probably my favorite comedian, and I thought this was typically great. As good as any of his specials, IMO.
Bo Burnham: Inside, 2021 – this is part musical comedy, part performance art, part standup, performed entirely inside a single room during the pandemic. One of the most amazing performances I’ve ever seen, and I can’t recommend it enough.
I recently discovered Nina Conti on YouTube. She is amazing and probably the best ventriloquist I’ve ever seen. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.
We watched Ronny Chieng: Love to Hate It (2024 Netflix) a few weeks ago. Fair to good for the most part but some parts, esp. when he does callbacks to earlier stuff about his father, were quite funny.
Okay to watch if you’ve got an hour free.
Daniel Sloss - Dark, Netflix - loved it - I can see the mentoring from Frankie Boyle in his work, which suits me to a T.
Taylor Tomlinson - Netflix, all 3 specials - Love, love, love. Delivery, subject matter, jokes, all work for me. Her late night show monologues are also great.
Not specials, but I’d also highly recommend Dropout - especially their Make Some Noise and Um, Actually shows.
Kathleen Madigan’s specials always get a laugh from me. John Mullaney’s pre-rehab stuff is really good too.
Fun factioid. Burnham’s girlfriend at the time owned the home where the nightmare on elm street was filmed. So Burnham filmed his special in the pool house in the backyard of the nightmare on elm street house.
I do have a bad review. Louis CK. Normally his stuff is great, but his last 3 specials have been the same material rehashed. I think he’s desperate for money and just putting out the same material over and over.
This is an older one but ‘footprints on the moon’ by chad Daniels is good.
If you haven’t seen Eddie pepitone, he has 2 good specials on Tubi. For the masses, and in ruins.
Just saw Tig Notaro’s newest special, Hello Again. She tells stories in a funny way, rather than a series of funny lines. She almost a meta-comic, telling people ahead of time that there will not be a punchline, then drawing out the story until the audience is bursting with tension to hear the inevitable punchline, and then ending with a tacit “I told you so.” Her dry wit may not be for everyone but her cult is rabid; they’re not getting this elsewhere.
Since @MrDibble mentioned Taylor Tomlinson, I have to put in a plug for the fake game show she hosts, After Midnight. (It’s the reboot of Chris Hardwick’s @Midnight from Comedy Central.) This one is on CBS following Stephen Colbert, and streaming on Paramount+ and in segments on YouTube.
Three comedians respond to internet foolishness and silly games with jokes and improv. Some of the jokes are prewritten, but the personalities come through. With four episodes a week that’s 50 comics you may never have heard of and 10 stars a month, the best intro to current humor I can think of. Taylor does a monolog every night. She’s only 31 and will be a star for a long time.
I also recommend this show. She did a good job plugging it on Neal Brenan’s show some months back.
Erica Rhodes’ “Sad Lemon” is worth a watch (or listen). You might remember her from her occasional voice-acting roles on A Prairie Home Companion, though her stand-up material gets quite a bit darker.
I started watching it when it first aired, but eventually gave up on it. Part of the problem I had with it was that half the time I couldn’t follow what the “contestants” were saying, so I missed the jokes. Closed captioning was totally useless, as it couldn’t keep up with the rapid-fire dialogue.
Going back to earlier in the fall of last year, we watched Hasan Minhaj: Off With His Head. Fairly good, but looking back on it now his politics seem very unfunny.
I’m not going to mention the mediocre garbage I’ve seen lately, but did re-watch this a month ago…
Mort Sahl - NYC - 2002
https://youtu.be/VmQa7wi97QA
I caught a stand-up routine on HBO called Just For Us, by Alex Edelman, and I haven’t laughed so hard in years. Definitely worth catching if you can, IMHO. It starts a hair slow, but if you hang in, you won’t regret it.
Watched Roy Wood Jr.'s standup show Lonely Flowers. (Released in early Jan but not that new.)
While the political jokes are quite dated, there is barely any of that. Lots of more personal stuff. Pretty good overall, nice finishing story.
Give it 3.5 bubbles.
Unless the long version captures something the clips don’t, I also didn’t like it. Tomlinsons’ standup delivery is phenomenal: her persona is self-deprecating, wry, snarky, and hilarious in a way that’s exactly up my alley. But the clips from her show just sound like she’s reading cue cards in a chirpy voice and forcing laughter at the comedians’ responses. It just doesn’t work for me, much to my disappointment.
My new personal favorite is Josh Johnson. Here’s a recent set, from Valentine’s Day here in Asheville (it sold out before I could get tickets). It’s nearly an hour, with a big chunk in the middle about Kendrick’s halftime show.
Part of what’s remarkable is that his material is so timely, AND so location-specific (like, there’s five or ten minutes at the beginning about Asheville), and also it’s almost formally constructed in terms of callback jokes and pacing from hilarious to serious. Like, when did he have time to write and rehearse this hour of material that he can’t really reuse at any other time or place?
His delivery is much slower than a lot of stand-up, with a lot of silence woven throughout, and I find that pacing really compelling. And he can definitely veer into the profound; his political commentary is subtle and spot-on.
If you don’t care about Kendrick’s beef with Drake, there’s gonna be a lot in that clip that might be hard to access, so here’s another clip about Elon Musk.
I’ll throw out a recommendation for a local up-and-comer, Sam Miller of Olympia, WA. His first special Round Trip came out in 2023 and he’s filming his second next month. His story is that when he was younger he had a meth addiction and was homeless and in and out of jail, and now he’s a happily-married father of two who’s been clean and sober for nearly 15 years, and his comedy is mostly about his old life and how different it is from being a family man, with a lot of local color mixed in. (It’s not in the special, but he actually has a joke about me kicking him out of the Jack in the Box I used to manage 15 years ago.)