BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
1. Jerrod Carmichael, Rothaniel (HBO)
This special is the epitome of a comedian dismantling his own performance. Carmichael and his director, Bo Burnham, integrate elements of audience response to probe the ways we think about acceptance, reception, and the relationship between performer and spectator. All of it is connected by Carmichael’s announcement that he is gay, and it’s astonishing how he frames that revelation with the theme of seeing things that are hidden in plain sight.
2. Matt Rogers, Have You Heard of Christmas? (Showtime)
Rogers uses the holiday as the baseline for a delightfully oddball, intensely gay musical comedy that is ostensibly about how Christmas is a very sexy time of year.
A little deeper under the surface, it’s about Rogers’s exploitation of the Christmas capitalism complex and the weirdness of this season that so many are obliged to perform every year.
3. Ali Siddiq, The Domino Effect (YouTube)
Siddiq has an incredible facility for creating characters and for careful, sharp physical act-outs, but his superpower is the way he maintains extended stories, moving in and out of narrative tangents and tensions that sprawl across years.
4. Kate Berlant, Cinnamon in the Wind (FX on Hulu)
This special is the clearest expression of the work Berlant has been doing for years—an attempt to capture in 45 minutes the deliberately loose, unpredictable openness of her shows. She stands in front of a mirrored background in an improvised performance that continually points out its own performativity.
5. Catherine Cohen, The Twist …? She’s Gorgeous (Netflix)
Cohen’s musical comedy is a Miss Piggy–esque cabaret hour. It’s laden with references, selfconsciousness, and the style of too-online continuous commentary that drives someone to announce “Bridge!” every time the accompanist arrives at a bridging key change.
6. Bill Burr, Live at Red Rocks (Netflix)
This supersize set dwells on every hot-button topic Burr can find. He revels in his ability to deliver shock, and to his credit, he can negotiate his way around tiresome, overwrought ideas better than nearly anyone else of the “A comedian’s job is to offend” ilk. What allows Burr to stand head and shoulders above the rest, though, is his willingness to connect the dots between his comic sensibility and his understanding of himself as a person.
7. Sheng Wang, Sweet and Juicy (Netflix)
Wang’s comedy has an unmistakable bongrip quality. It’s slow and relaxed, full of bizarre non sequiturs and sly moments of weirdness that seem as if they should be going somewhere but then proudly do not. It’s so chill it feels like a throwback next to the current trend of forthright confessional comedy. But there’s still the feeling of discovering Wang’s odd individuality.
8. Taylor Tomlinson, Look at You (Netflix)
Tomlinson’s comedic persona is bouncy and bright in a way that almost disguises her lacerating commentary. Look at You is a notable advancement, stretching into material about her mother’s death and her own mental health. She has also become increasingly confident at performing silly act-outs and, in this set, is great at moving between gravity and goofiness.
9. Lil Rel Howery, I Said It. Y’all Thinking It. (HBO)
Some specials are highly controlled productions resulting from years of careful story development. And some are a whole party. Howery’s previous stand-up release, from 2019, was one of those meticulous showcases.
His latest, filmed where he grew up in Chicago, is like someone crammed a block party into a theater and Howery is a DJ flipping through a set list of all the songs he knows this hometown crowd will love the most.
10. Atsuko Okatsuka, The Intruder (HBO)
A fun, assured example of how to do an hourlong special on a major platform. In the title joke, Okatsuka uses a story about someone trying to break into her home to pull together all kinds of material about herself and her family. It’s a canny way to explore all the facets of her comic sensibility.