Looking back over the past 12 months, it struck me how it has been the shows fashioned from personal stories that have stayed with me. It wasn't simply that the comics could make very good jokes about their travails or embarrassments, but that the material had a strong ring of authenticity. There's nothing wrong with delivering other people's gags (plenty of top-flight performers do it, of course) but when it rings true, it's somehow funnier.So among the comics whose shows I've liked most were Kiri Pritchard-McLean's Peacock (tour restarts 25 January), in which she talks about her experiences Read more ...

In April 2023 the actor and comic Jamie Foxx had a stroke and was lucky to survive. In his latest Netflix Special, What Had Happened Was... he tells us about it, and his recovery. It's fitting, he tells us, that the show was recorded in Atlanta, just 400 yards away from the hospital he was taken to by his sister, who knew something was seriously wrong.The show is a curious – and undoubtedly unique – mix of comedy, music and thanksgiving that at times feels more like a revivalist meeting as Foxx attests repeatedly that God saved him. The religiosity – and there's a lot of it – may be off- Read more ...

Ricky Gervais begins by bringing us up to date with the latest “outrage” he has caused; two Netflix specials, SuperNature and Armageddon, upset some people, he tells us, thus giving them even more attention than they might otherwise have had. So now with Mortality he's probably going to upset some more, thus making the Netflix special that will follow its lengthy tour (ending in November next year) even more successful. “Stupid cunts.”Well, yes, Gervais is very good at needling those who no doubt will take umbrage at some of the jokes in Mortality, the ones about slavery, or paedophiles and Read more ...

Kemah Bob is a regular on television and radio panel shows and well established on the comedy circuit, but Miss Fortunate is her full-length debut. And what a debut; a personal story – ostensibly about the holiday from hell – that manages to riff on mental health, sexual adventure and cultural assumptions. And be funny.Bob, a Texan transplanted to London for the past eight years – “Because I hate sunshine and love abortion” – is a great storyteller, dropping a detail here, an interesting fact there (asides on weird animal genitalia pepper the show) as she recounts a tale about a Thai holiday Read more ...

Natalie Palamides doesn't do things by halves. Actually, the Los Angeles-based clown does just that in her inventive new show Weer  – a hit at the Traverse Theatre at this year's Edinburgh Fringe – in which she plays the male and female partners in a fractious relationship. Simultaneously.Weer – the title is explained late on – tells the story of Mark and Christina. Palamides' costume and wig are divided into male and female halves, so as her left side is turned to the audience she is Christina, with her right side, she is Mark. It is, as you may imagine, a very physical performance, but Read more ...

Kiri Pritchard-McLean has spoken on stage before about her interest in helping young people – including in her 2017 show, Appropriate Adult, in which she talked about being a mentor to a vulnerable youngster. In Peacock, her latest touring show which I saw as part of the inaugural Brighton Dome Comedy Festival, she talks about how she and her partner, Dan, came to be foster carers.There are, the comic informs us, more than 100,000 children in the care system in the UK. It's a subject that in less assured hands could be dull, preachy or an exercise in virtue-signalling – she Read more ...

Rose Matafeo knows how to make an entrance, as she enters the stage with a choreographed dance. She's useless at ending things, she says – shows, relationships – so she's going to start On and On and On with something memorable. She doesn't need to, as this affable Kiwi has the audience hooked straight away in her first stand-up since her success with romcom Starstruck, 2018's Horndog and her appearance in 2019 edition of Taskmaster.Starstruck – which she also co-wrote and starred in – was a funny and honest account of twentysomething relationships. But now, at 32, Matafeo is doing Read more ...

Hard to imagine it now, but just a few years ago Ellen DeGeneres was one of America’s biggest daytime TV stars; her chatshow The Ellen DeGeneres Show attracted Hollywood stars and politicians and she was paid millions for it. But then, in 2022, it was cancelled amid accusations there was a toxic atmosphere on set created by senior members of her team. This is the context of For Your Approval, which the comic says is her last stand-up appearance.The Netflix Special starts with a film giving a brief overview of DeGeneres’ career before she comes on stage to a standing ovation, the first of the Read more ...

Before Joe Rogan gained fame for his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, he has been, variously, a comic,  presenter of goofball television shows and an analyst of UTC bouts. Now with  his Netflix Special he’s returning to his first occupation, as a stand-up. It was recorded at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas.Rogan, as his fans will know, is not short of opinions (with his politics on the right of the spectrum in the United States) and can turn a smart phrase. But in Burn the Boats he muses on the quotidian rather than the weighty political subjects often discussed in his Read more ...

You have to admire the ambition of a show called Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life, the latest from Zoë Coombs Marr, which she performed at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe and is now in its Soho Theatre residency. It’s an hour that takes on some big themes – sexuality, mental health, the state of comedy – while digging down into her life as she reaches 40, and has done something of a stock check.For the most part it works as Coombs Marr talks us through not what we may consider to be the big life events of weddings and funerals, but those brief moments we experience that stick in our Read more ...

You may spend some of Adam Sandler's new Netflix Special wondering what's going on. But if you're a fan of his alma mater, Saturday Night Live, you'll guess that the clearly staged first few minutes act as a homage to its “cold opening”, as we see Sandler arrive at the venue, walk through the backstage mayhem of greeters, fans and hangers-on, and then take the stage.In Love You, Sandler teams up again with Josh Safdie, who co-directed him in Uncut Gems, a departure for Sandler the actor from his previous straight-up comedy or geek roles; here the departure is from traditional standup, as the Read more ...

Though among the most successful film comedians of the early sound era, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s cinematic partnership had actually started in the early 1920s. It’s easy to overlook their silent short films, 15 of which are collected here.The oldest, 1921’s Lucky Dog, is an entertaining curio, a starring vehicle for Laurel’s Keatonesque naif with Ollie in a subordinate role as a hapless thug. Stan’s athleticism is impressive, whether he’s being struck by a streetcar or sneaking into a dog show on all fours, and there’s a winning turn from the titular canine. Both actors signed contracts Read more ...