Comedy

In the 1990s, the BBC had a popular flat-share comedy, Men Behaving Badly, about a pair of giggling bachelors who were scolded and dominated by their mummy-substitute girl-friends. The author, Simon Nye, has written a historical crime caper about the theft of the crown jewels in 1671, as Charles II prepared to celebrate his tenth year on the throne. The psychological co-ordinates of the play are poorly handled. The thief, Colonel Blood, is an irritating Irish crosspatch who wants to drive the hated English from his homeland. Charles (played by Al Murray) is more attractive, a fun-loving gadabout who enjoys sex, jokes and science and who can’t bear Puritans. So the audience sides with the King and hopes that Blood’s vindictive scheme will fail.

Adam Devine, the star of the hit television series Workaholics and new Netflix movie The Out-Laws, recently gave some insight as to why comedies are hardly ever made by movie studios anymore. Devine appeared on the most recent episode of comedian Theo Von's podcast, This Past Weekend, where the pair discussed the downfall of comedy in movies. Devine, who also appeared in the Pitch Perfect series, surmised that high-budget superhero movies made comedies and other low-budget films less attractive to viewers spending money on theater tickets. He and Von also pointed out how movie executives try to force political and moral messages into their content — and that there is no longer "funny for funny's sake." "There's no hidden message," Devine said of his new movie.

In 2022's Triangle of Sadness, the first English language film from Force Majeure director Ruben Östlund, Woody Harrelson plays an addled Marxist captain of the Cristina O — in real life, the former yacht of the Onassis family, in the movie a doomed cruise vessel for the ludicrously rich. Harrelson is a jaded observer and capitalist critic who despises his passengers, choosing to order a cheeseburger and fries when others dine on oysters and caviar. He reads passages from Noam Chomsky into the microphone as the wealthy devolve into a roiling pile of puke and shit: "There are very few that are gonna look in the mirror and say, ‘the person I see is a savage monster.’ Instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

Roseanne Barr is back on the screen again. The once-beloved comedienne and namesake of the hit sitcom from the late Eighties and Nineties, Roseanne, has a new comedy special on Fox Nation, the subscription service from Fox News. Titled Cancel This, it hearkens back to the short-lived Roseanne reboot, which aired from 2017 to 2018 before being canceled after Barr tweeted a picture of Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett with the caption “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” What should have happened next, Roseanne says, was for Jarrett to appear on the show to roast her, both the person and the character. It would have been a teachable moment. It would have gotten tens of millions of views. Instead, though, she was canceled.

Before the beginning of February, American viewers may have been forgiven for not knowing who Philomena Cunk was. The actress who plays her, Diane Morgan, was familiar enough thanks to her appearances in Ricky Gervais’ After Life and brief cameos in the Charlie Brooker-scripted Death to 2020 and Death to 2021. The one, the only, Philomena Cunk, however, remained a British phenomenon, much like Marmite and poor dentistry. Yet Netflix, recognizing the universal brilliance of the Cunk character, stepped in to co-produce her new series, Cunk on Earth, with the BBC. It aired to an appreciative Britain last September — now the United States has the great privilege of seeing Cunk unleashed. For the uninitiated, the set-up is simple but endlessly effective.

Blockbuster is a single-cam sitcom about the last Blockbuster (located inside a strip mall in Michigan). The set is dressed in authentic signage, fluorescent lights, blue walls and an oddly prophetic Howard the Duck poster. The employees have real Blockbuster name tags and uniforms (the producer, John Fox, acquired the rights and handed it over to established showrunner Vanessa Ramos: I have the rights to Blockbuster. Would you like to develop a workplace?). Every episode is packed with movie references and checkout-counter humor. The transitions between scenes are scored to hip-hop beats that sound like something you’d hear on Nickelodeon in the Nineties. You’re inside a Blockbuster for the first time since Carol Danvers fell through its roof in Captain Marvel.

The 48th season of Saturday Night Live premieres tomorrow, and this one should be its last. The show has never felt more out of touch — a stale, punch-pulling iteration marked by a dim vision of what comedy can achieve in a politically and socially divisive moment. This is a target-rich environment, but SNL seems firmly of the opinion that taking shots against our current feckless leadership class is verboten. At a time when online comedy is exploding and hilarious sketches and specials abound on YouTube, SNL operates as if they have no competition. This offseason saw the show's biggest staff turnover in almost thirty years. This might have been an opportunity: if Saturday Night Live wanted to be relevant, the talent is obviously out there.

The biggest threat to the comedian of yesteryear was penury, but today even the most famous must dodge slaps, tackles and professional ruin. As a result, many have assumed a defensive posture. But on September 15, 2021, the court jesters were more defensive than ever. Norm Macdonald had perished twenty-four hours earlier, defeated by leukemia, and a chorus of his peers donned headsets to reassure the podcast world they’d “had no idea he was sick.” The one who spoke loudest was Conan O’Brien. Three months before O’Brien had wrapped his three-decade run on late night without a peep from the best guest he ever had: the man who gave us the Moth joke, “b-o-r-e-d,” Swedish-German and “that means he had sex with Madonna without a condom.