When Is a Stand-Up Special Like ‘The Wire’? When Ali Siddiq Is Onstage

In “The Domino Effect,” a genre-defying autobiographical epic on YouTube, the comic Ali Siddiq begins one part by casually asking the audience a question: “Has anyone here been duct-taped and thrown in a trunk?”

Then he goes back in time to explain how he got there. This feels like the start of a prestige crime drama, and his riveting project, spanning more than six hours and four chapters and completed last month, resembles a solo version of “The Wire” more than any stand-up special. With cheerful charisma, Siddiq, 50, describes entering the drug trade as a boy, being shuttled through the justice system and spending six years behind bars. In between comic scenes and farcical act-outs, there are gun battles, a prison riot, drug deals gone wrong.

Great personal storytelling relies on pacing and structure, but there’s also something to be said for living an interesting life. Siddiq has, yet he also never loses sight of the goal of getting laughs, even when he’s trapped in the trunk of his own car — where his first thought is anger at himself for sloppily putting the tire in there. This is nervy humor, violence always looming. In stand-up, you wait for the punchline. Here, it’s the punch.

After many years of telling jokes, Siddiq, who lives in Houston, broke through with “The Domino Effect.” It’s the kind of eccentric, messy project that could be made only in our age of self-produced specials. In a crowded field of them, it stood out, with Part 1 racking up 13 million views.

At the Beacon Theater in New York this year, the sold-out crowd stood and roared when he strolled onstage and sat down as relaxed as a suburban dad ready to settle in front of the television after a long week. This studied ordinary-guy casualness has become a trademark. He always begins shows with an offhand “Hey.” Describing the criminal world in white-collar workplace jargon is part of his humor. Siddiq doesn’t like to say he went to prison because he was a drug dealer. He prefers the term “street pharmaceutical rep.”

Using corporate jargon is one way Siddiq makes comedy out of his subject matter. He deflates the romance of crime and makes it relatable. At one point, he laments: “There’s no H.R. for crack dealing”