An old-fashioned storyteller with appealing rough edges

0 Lovebots is a sequel of sorts to Bilal Zafar’s enjoyable debut hour

of confidence and vulnerability.

Preceding her in a 10-minute spot, Lubna Kerr has the odd decent line but can’t come close to making a similar connection with the crowd.

Bilal Zafar has a similar problem. He’s an amiable storyteller but underpowered, meandering into this afternoon show with his explanation of some recent cosmetic surgery that he treats like it’s an elephant in the room, when it’s debatable if anyone noticed.

Regardless, Lovebots is a sequel of sorts to his enjoyable debut hour, with both shows

striving to twist the online Islamophobia he has received into cuddly comedy.

Withafriend’sprogramming skills and faux-naif optimism about changing the world, if only in a minor way, Zafar created a series of bots (automatic responses on Twitter) to popular right-wing hashtags and expressions of hate, his charges superficially modelled on classic British sitcom characters and spouting compassion.althoughtheoftenweird responses of his artificial intelligence is amusing and there’s satisfaction in playing whacka-mole with bigots, feeding more fakery into the internet doesn’t seem that laudable an aim. The automation of the programming also feeds into the show, which, having established the premise, Zafar relays as if on autopilot.

And while he identifies the hurt behind some of the trolls’ anger, he simply strings them along rather than offers the sort of help suggested by his hero Sarah Silverman’s example. Belatedly applying the benefits of his online experiment to the real world makes for an endearing coda, but it still feels a little forced.

JAY RICHARDSON

“While Bilal Zafar identifies the hurt behind some of the trolls’ anger, he simply strings them along rather than offers the sort of help suggested by his hero Sarah Silverman’s example.”