The week s best comedy on demand
The week s best comedy on demand. For more streaming gigs use the search box with online as the region.
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THE MISADVENTURES OF HEDI AND COKEMAN: Netflix has had quite some success with French programmes Call My Agent and Lupin. but this ribald drug-fuelled romp, just landed on the platform, is an altogether different beast. Here s a trailer:
MEET THE STREET: John Rutledge, aka Eggsy, from comedy hip-hop group Goldie Lookin Chain, launches a new podcast in the guise of retiree David Plympton, who is in conversation with various members of his neighbourhood. Comics playing the role of guests include Richard Sandling, Mike Bubbins, Eleri Morgan, Mark Davison, Dan Mitchell and Alex Lowe. Rutledge says: Lockdown has been duller than a loaf of Tesco value bread so I decided to make something to escape the drudgery of the current situation. Forget idle banter over the garden fence - David Plympton s Meet the Street introduces you to the record-brea
Station orders three stand-up specials with a focus on working-class upbringings
Tom Mayhew, Jacob Hawley and George Fouracres are the latest comics to land stand-up specials for Radio 4 – all making reference to their working-class roots.
Tom Mayhew is recording his show, Benefit Scum, next week. It’s an autobiographical half-hour about growing up working-class and his time on benefits.
The BBC says: ‘[It] takes a wry, sideways look at the prejudices that people have towards benefits claimants and turns those assumptions on their head.’
It has been adapted from his an audio adaptation of Mayhew s acclaimed 2019 Edinburgh show I, Tom Mayhew.
Lots of new shows and podcasts are springing up, which is jolly: too many to fit in one column, so Iâll come to some over the next few weeks. Here are a couple for you to wrap your ears aroundâ¦
You Donât Know Me is a new series about the younger end of Generation Z â those teenagers and young adults born between 1996 and 2008. Hosted by journalist Chloe Combi, who published a 2015 book of interviews with the same age group, each programme in this 12-part podcast is built around a theme: body image, popularity, pornography, race and others. Combi talks to one or two teenagers who have had experience in each topic and then brings in an expert (a politician, a behaviour advisor, a school head, a writer) for their insight. A simple structure, but an effective one: Combi is a great interviewer, especially of young people, and the showâs punch comes from their candid testimonies.
For a new Radio 4 chat show next year
Meera Syal is to revive her alter-ego Granny Kumar for a new Radio 4 series.
The comedian will front an all-female chat show as the pensioner, starting in February. In each show Syal’s creation will be joined by with her great-granddaughter Maya (Ambreen Razia) and ’frenemy’ Geeta (Harvey Virdi).
Guests lined up for Gossip And Goddesses with Granny Kumar include Samira Ahmed, actress Thandie Newton, musician Beverley Knight, and space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
Granny Kumar made her debut as part of The Kumars at Number 42 on BBC Two in 2001. The format which involved guests arriving at a fiction British-Indian family home, ran for six series on the BBC, moving to BBC One in 2005. It was then revived for a single series by Sky One in 2013.
As established names go global online, the next generation of stand-ups face losing their launchpad
12 December 2020 • 6:00am
Going online: London Hughes s To Catch a D ck was a hit at the Bloomsbury Theatre, and is coming to Netflix
Credit: Karla Gowlett
The view from the sofa is good. If you close the curtains to the outside world, and judge the health of stand-up purely by the output of the streaming giants, the picture seems rosy.
Netflix boasts a pair of wickedly provocative shows about sex in the 21st century from London Hughes and Natalie Palamides, while Amazon, after lagging behind for years, is now hoovering up comedians. After great new specials by Zoë Coombs Marr, Jayde Adams and Tom Walker, last week the streaming service put out 11 more, by the likes of Nish Kumar, Josie Long and sketch duo Lazy Susan.