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      On Keegan-Michael Key’s Podcast, a Provocative Case for Sketch Comedy

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyOn Keegan-Michael Key’s Podcast, a Provocative Case for Sketch ComedyThe 10-part series mixes history, memoir, analysis and performance to show how classic scenes can be revived just as classic theater is.Keegan-Michael Key as a substitute teacher in a sketch from “Key & Peele.”Credit…Comedy CentralJan. 27, 2021Updated 5:18 p.m. ETWhat if the most impressive post-sketch show career belongs to Key, not Peele?Sure, it’s a hot take, but hear me out. Jordan Peele followed the Comedy Central hit “Key & Peele” by merely becoming one of the greatest film auteurs of his generation, whereas his partner, Keegan-Michael Key, took a more varied route, stealing scenes in “Hamlet” at the Public Theater and improvising bits on Broadway, singing in a movie musical, starring in a comedy series, doing prolific voice work in blockbuster movies, hosting a game show and being an absolutely stellar talk-show guest (his conversations with Conan O’Brien are hilarious). Measured by diversity of work and bounty of laughs, Key stacks up well, particularly after his new project, the Audible podcast series “The History of Sketch Comedy,” is released on Thursday.The title doesn’t do it justice. Directed and co-written with his wife, Elle Key, “The History of Sketch Comedy” is far more eccentric, funny and personal than an Intro to Comedy class, although it is that, too. His 10 half-hour or so episodes cover thousands of years from the ancient Sumerians (who kicked comedy off with a fart joke) right up to Tim Robinson’s Netflix show “I Think You Should Leave.”But this comedy nerd history is filtered through memoir, with Key relating stories of his budding fandom, training and rise from improv comic to television sketch artist. He follows talk about comedy from Aristophanes by saying he grew up “a chariot” ride from Greektown in Detroit.Along the way, he pauses to offer the kind of practical tips you might find in MasterClass videos. “If you are an actor in a comedy, you should be trying to make the crew laugh,” he instructs in the ninth episode. Key explains concepts taught in comedy schools like “heightening” or “the game of a scene,” and also breaks down the four main comedy-character archetypes, dating to the commedia dell’arte. Demystifying the art, he provides if not a formula, then a road map.Yet the most ambitious role he plays is not as a comedy mentor or amateur historian, but as a performer. The heart of this series, an odd genre hybrid that reminds me of Al Pacino’s documentary “Looking for Richard,” is in the sketches. Instead of relying on tape from “Saturday Night Live,” “In Living Color” or any other beloved shows, Key performs them all himself, setting them up, playing all the parts.It’s a feat to pivot from analysis to performance, let alone between Abbott and Costello and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It’s also a risk. Can jokes from “Chappelle’s Show” still work if you take out Dave Chappelle? And considering the reputation that comedy doesn’t age well, will old sketches still make audiences laugh?They certainly crack up Keegan-Michael Key, who pairs a fan’s gushing enthusiasm with the skilled craftsmanship of a seasoned pro who knows that laughter can be contagious. Obviously, there’s no way a podcast is going to prove that Sid Caesar’s physical comedy is unmatched, as Key argues, but it can make a strong case for Bob and Ray’s “Slow Talkers of America” routine. Key’s version of this classic, built on the frustration of a conversation with a man who takes extremely long pauses, is absolutely hilarious.Key is generally a faithful interpreter, but his goofy, ingratiating sensibility inevitably offers a new take, warming up, for instance, the chilly absurdism of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” In his final episode, Key is particularly persuasive championing what he considers the pinnacle of the art form: The audition segment in “Mr. Show,” the great, innovative sketch series by David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, that hinges on an elegantly simple premise about the misunderstanding of when a scene begins. What makes Key such a superb interpreter is how alert he is to the subtle choices, the minor variations, that build pace and spin a setup into something dizzyingly funny.Key delights in witty, formally inventive comedy, which shows up in his very fine discussion of British humor in the sixth episode. Along with the obvious examples — Python, “Beyond the Fringe” — he lavishes attention on an early 1970s TV show less well known in America called “The Two Ronnies,” which builds a whole sketch on misunderstanding names. He then explains how a famous sketch he did on “Key and Peele” about a substitute teacher shares the same tactic. It isn’t the only time he uses his own experience to illuminate older work.Eddie Murphy, right, doing a Stevie Wonder impression alongside the music star on “Saturday Night Live.”Credit…Anthony Barboza/Getty ImagesThere’s a poignancy to him remembering the first time he heard his stoic father laugh. Seeing him break up at Eddie Murphy doing a Stevie Wonder impression with Wonder at his side on “Saturday Night Live” made such an impression that Key described it as “the beginning of my sketch-comedy path.” His enthusiasm can veer into cloying dad humor, but his delight in forgotten artists is infectious.It’s questionable whether Timmie Rogers belongs in this podcast (he’s more of a stand-up), but it’s still exhilarating to hear Key doing the mid-20th-century act of this trailblazer, the first comic to headline the Apollo and star in an all-Black variety show on network television, “Uptown Jubilee.” Rejecting vaudeville stereotypes and racist conventions like blackface, Rogers transitioned from a musical double act into a politically wry solo performer, making him a founding father of stand-up. Compared with fellow comic revolutionaries like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, Rogers tends to get short shrift in accounts of that era. But in performing his old catch phrase (“Oh, yeah!”), Key doesn’t just pay tribute. He offers a reintroduction.“The History of Sketch Comedy” keeps an eye on comprehensiveness, including quick histories of burlesque and vaudeville as well as the Broadway revue (“a vaudeville show dressed in a tuxedo”). The podcast goes out of its way to name-check a dizzying number of television shows. So it feels churlish to single out an omission, but the absence of Tim and Eric stands out because their aesthetic is so influential, including on shows “History” examines, like “Portlandia.”And yet, one comes away from this series not just entertained and informed, but also convinced. It has an argument, even if it doesn’t overtly state it. Sketch is a rich, deceptively intricate art, even if part of its power is in its simplicity. Fart jokes endure for a reason. In creating a de facto canon, Key proves that the best examples of sketch comedy can be triumphantly revived like classic works of theater. To put it succinctly, a necessity for the form: If Rodgers and Hammerstein, why not Nichols and May?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chris Rock Re-edits a Special, and the Result Is Fascinating

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyChris Rock Re-edits a Special, and the Result Is FascinatingWith “Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut,” the comic effectively erases the stamp of the original director, Bo Burnham, and turns in a less intimate show.The comedian served as the director of the new version of “Tamborine.”Credit…NetflixJan. 12, 2021Updated 7:13 p.m. ETIn film, directors have all the power, less so in theater. But they are omnipotent compared with the director of the stand-up special, who, to borrow a metaphor from Chris Rock’s already essential 2018 special, “Tamborine,” has not traditionally led the band so much as stood on the side and played the tambourine.But in recent years, directors’ status has shifted, becoming more like bass players or even drummers, in part because of specials like “Tamborine,” directed with style by the innovative comic Bo Burnham. His auteur vision didn’t just showcase Rock in concert. It engaged and interpreted his work, sharpened its focus, while applying distinctive aesthetic flourishes.“Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut,” released on Netflix on Tuesday, will be fascinating for comedy nerds, not just because it adds new jokes, with almost 40 minutes of extra material from arguably the greatest living comic. It also represents a key turning point in the balance of power between comic and director, with Rock reclaiming control. He effectively erases the stamp of the director, even replacing Burnham in the credits with his own name, and produces a new special with most of the same shots, whose differences are subtle but significant.“Extended Cut” has more jokes, longer setups and more mess. Rock, who has himself directed features, even introduces a part where he misspeaks in setting up a joke, saying “bullies rule the world” when he means “nerds.” Burnham’s slick cinematic flourishes are taken out. Gone is the triple repetition, along with quick-cutting camera angles, of the first three words of the opening joke. (“You would think that cops would occasionally shoot a white kid, just to make it look good.”)But the most important contrast is in the comic’s discussion of his own infidelity. Until “Tamborine,” Rock was known as a social commentator who mostly kept his private life at a distance. But addressing his divorce and his responsibility for the failure of his marriage, Rock made the most vulnerable, introspective comedy of his career. Burnham was clearly drawn to this aspect of the set and focused on it. This material, including jokes about marriage, divorce and sex, takes up about half of the special, as opposed to around a third of the extended version.When Rock confessed his mistakes, Burnham moved into a rare close-up. And he stayed on the star’s face, with no cutaway shots, as Rock talked about cheating on his wife. When the crowd chuckled, Rock looked grave, emphasizing that he wasn’t proud. He said he knew what people were thinking: “What is wrong with men?”On this line, Burnham did something dramatic: He shrank the frame even more, moving in on Rock like a microscope, so close to him that it obscured part of his head. It’s an aggressive move, and one that both underlines the question of what is wrong with men and broadens it, giving this personal story a new weight, especially since it came out just months after the Harvey Weinstein exposé and inevitably evokes the #MeToo movement.A year later, Kevin Hart released a special, “Irresponsible,” in which he also discussed cheating on his wife. He was more oblique, briefer in his contrition, and the special cut away from him after a joke to show the crowd laughing. Whereas Burnham kept the audience out of it, “Irresponsible” took a more ingratiating route, with a shot that indicated it was OK to laugh before keeping things moving.Rock’s extended version remains tougher-minded but moves closer to this posture. He removes the extreme close-up, which, along with its role in drawing attention to the material, is something of a signature Burnham shot. He used it at the start of his direction of Jerrod Carmichael’s game-changing special “8” — whose filmic aesthetic inspired Rock to hire him. In place of that touch, Rock adds a new shot, a mouse-eye view of the star from the front of the stage partly obscured by what appears to be a member of the audience. This new angle looks up at a performer, in awe.What sticks with you in the original is the setup — the admission of cheating with three women and the specificity of the confession. In the extended cut, it’s the punchline, as Rock anticipates the audience response and contrasts the shock from women with the more blasé response of men. (“Three? That’s it? Just three?”) It’s the same joke, but the direction changes the effect.The original version of the special moved in on Rock like a microscope.Credit…NetflixThe new version is a more conventional, if unvarnished, stand-up production, but it also may be truer to the experience of the concert. As someone who saw the first theater show in 2017 on the tour that resulted in this special, I was happy to experience certain jokes again, many of which zero in on the economic angle of a hot-button issue, like his take on how “prices are the new Jim Crow.” He goes on to explain, “The Four Seasons hotel does not say, ‘No Blacks allowed.’ But a $4,000 a night hotel suite sure does.”Rock’s diagnosis of police brutality also returns to money when he says cops are poorly paid “and you get what you pay for.” The streamlined cut emphasized the personal, but the extended version is a reminder that Rock has always been a materialist alert to how the bottom-line colors almost every issue.In a departure from the swaggering, pacing Chris Rock in his big-room shows, Burnham emphasized intimacy in the quiet, jazzy open that showed us the back of the comic’s head waiting for the show to start, observing. The extended cut dispenses with this image of the solitary Rock and adds celebratory scenes hanging out with other comics. We see Eric Andre, Dave Chappelle and Arsenio Hall. The new version is also more straightforward about his fame. Rock places clips of appearances on talk shows he did to promote the special as a way to flesh out certain jokes.This new version does not erase the old one, which remains on Netflix, but it will supplant it for many fans. So while both are worthwhile, if you are going to watch one, my recommendation is to go with the original. It’s more stylish, ambitious and unusual. And its direction represents a step forward for the art, one that inches the special closer to the status of feature films.Stand-up comedians are often control freaks. It’s part of why they go into a job where you not only write your lines, but also deliver them. There are real benefits to this kind of control, but there is also virtue in collaboration, particularly for work that aims for more thematic, aesthetic and narrative complexity.The audience wants comedy that feels most authentic to the animating vision of the artist. But that is not the same thing as work done without filters or assistance. Sometimes you need other voices to help you be the best version of yourself.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      When Is a Comedy Special Also a Corporate Synergy Message?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyWhen Is a Comedy Special Also a Corporate Synergy Message?Two year-end shows from Amazon and Netflix deliver some laughs, yes, but also serve as veiled ads for the streaming services themselves.Samuel L. Jackson in “Death to 2020,” a new Netflix comedy special.Credit…Saeed Adyani/NetflixDec. 30, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ETAt the start of “Death to 2020,” a reporter played by Samuel L. Jackson sits alone in an abandoned office listening to a disembodied voice explain he’s looking back at the past year. “Why would you want to do that?” Jackson responds, with an additional curse for emphasis.The question haunts the next hour. One reasonable answer is that hearing Samuel L. Jackson swear is one of the finest pleasures in popular culture. Another: Where else are you going to go for some new jokes by famous people right now? The last week of the year is traditionally rich with live comedy events, but the pandemic has sidelined beloved annual shows from Sandra Bernhard and Dave Attell. Two streaming services have tried to fill the void by creating their own new genre. With talent-rich one-off specials, “Death to 2020” (on Netflix) and “Yearly Departed” (on Amazon) are comedy’s answer to journalism’s year-end lists.“Death,” slickly produced by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, the pair behind “Black Mirror,” is a fake documentary starring a fantasy team of actors, while “Yearly,” a more stripped-down affair hosted by Phoebe Robinson, imagines a funeral for things lost in 2020 attended by a cast of superb female comics. But both conceits are essentially thin pretexts to throw a bunch of jokes together recapping recent news under socially distanced conditions. Some of the bits are solid, others aren’t. But they never add up to more than fine diversions.“Death to 2020,” which lists no fewer than 18 writers, presents an array of talking heads, all caricatures, quipping about a highlight reel of news events: Tom Hanks getting Covid-19, Trump talking about injecting bleach, Biden in the basement and more of the greatest hits. There isn’t a strong perspective here outside of ugh, this year, can you believe it? And there’s fun to be had with these performances, including Hugh Grant playing a foppishly pretentious academic with impeccable condescension.Phoebe Robinson is the host of “Yearly Departed,” on Amazon.Credit…Nicole Wilder/Amazon StudiosGrant, who has aged into a masterful player of villains, always begins in seriousness before veering into dumb absurdity. Describing the fires that ravaged many parts of the world early in the year, he states: “It left these areas utterly inhospitable,” before pausing for the punchline: “Even to Australians.” Then there’s: “People think democracy is permanent and unchanging,” he says. “In truth, it’s something you must perpetually nurture like a woman. Or a professional grudge.”Many of the actors don’t play new characters so much as version of ones that have been popular elsewhere. As Dr. Maggie Gravel, Leslie Jones alternates between abrupt rage and pleading lustfulness. And in a turn that will delight fans of “The Comeback,” Lisa Kudrow turns a pathologically lying White House aide into hilarious cringe comedy.My favorite is Cristin Milioti’s Kathy Flowers, the ultimate Karen, whose series of monologues add up to the closest thing to a fleshed-out character arc here, starting in placid suburban normalcy before the internet radicalizes her, shifting into eye-bursting, conspiratorial madness. It’s silly sketch comedy performed with the commitment of an elite actor. More often in this special, the joke takes precedence over character, and the monologues have the feel of a collection of punch lines doled out like cards at a table.“Yearly Departed” also looks back in anguish, but instead of actors playing types, standup comics act as eulogists, taking turns at a lectern to pay their respects. Tiffany Haddish bids farewell to casual sex, and Natasha Rothwell speaks about giving up on “TV cops.” Everyone appears to be together, watching each other, but they were all filmed separately and cut together with reaction shots. The resulting feel is oddly uncanny.Not only are there seasoned stars like Sarah Silverman, but they mix in some new breakouts like Ziwe Fumudoh and up-and comers like Patti Harrison, who delivers one of the funniest, most acutely observed eulogies on the obsolescence of “rich girl Instagram influencers.” With mock poignancy, she asks: “Who could forget your surface-level love for photography, which you tried to get people to call ‘memory remembering,’ a term you coined.”The guest “eulogists” include Patti Harrison mourning the loss of “rich girl Instagram influencers.”Credit…Nicole Wilder/Amazon StudiosThe comic Natasha Leggero has a sharp set on the death of her desire to have kids, where she speaks for many parents during the pandemic saying: “I love my daughter, but I love her in the same way I love LSD. In microdoses.”Along with the stand-ups, some actors made cameos including Sterling K. Brown, laying on the floor to illustrate the span of six feet, along with Rachel Brosnahan, perhaps to remind you that “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” can be seen on Amazon. Her flat set about the death of pants is a reminder that playing a stand-up is not the same as being one. “Yearly” is hit or miss, but so are most stand-up sets at clubs, and by showing us a well-curated collection of female talent, there were more good jokes than in “Death to 2020.” And fewer stale ones.And yet watching both these shows repeatedly bemoan the miseries of the past year, I couldn’t help but think how the streaming services producing them actually did very well. Just as the pandemic has disproportionately hurt marginalized and disadvantaged groups, it has devastated small theaters and clubs while benefiting digital behemoths.That Jeff Bezos made $90 billion during the pandemic goes unmentioned on Amazon’s “Yearly Departed.” And while the script for “Death to 2020” points out how people stuck at home during lockdown spent more time on Netflix, name-dropping the reality shows “Love Is Blind” and “Floor Is Lava” amid the tragic news events makes you wonder if this was self-mocking comedy or corporate synergy? Spoiler alert: It’s both.In our ever more consolidated culture, where product placement is the norm and only a few companies produce the vast majority of large-scale entertainment, Netflix covers all the bases, pumping out escapist content for an audience stuck at home, then poking fun at themselves for doing it. “Death to 2020” was billed as a departure for the creators of “Black Mirror,” a comedy instead of a haunting vision of technology gone awry. And yet, seen from a different angle, it might be their darkest dystopian production yet.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      5 Things to Do This Christmas Weekend

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This Christmas WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 24, 2020, 11:03 a.m. ETTheaterLet Them Entertain You, Pandemic-StyleTelly Leung, with Joe Goodrich on piano, in a number from “Sondheim Unplugged,” which premieres on Saturday.Credit…Ordinary SundayIn the fantasy version of a December evening, we would sweep in off West 54th Street, down the staircase and into the cozy, enveloping glamour that always makes Feinstein’s/54 Below feel like it’s ready for its close-up. We would slide into a booth and order a little something lovely. Then the long-running cabaret series “Sondheim Unplugged” would begin — one more shimmering perk to spending the holidays in New York.Happily, the pandemic version of “Sondheim Unplugged” is quite nice, too: elegant, consoling, peppered with deadpan humor. Shot on five cameras and streaming on Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (and then available on demand from Sunday to Jan. 9), it’s an hour of Sondheim hits and obscurities, sung by Broadway performers, with only piano for accompaniment. High points include Telly Leung’s heartstring-plucking “Being Alive,” Lucia Spina’s seethingly angry “Could I Leave You?” and T. Oliver Reid’s exquisitely regretful “Good Thing Going.” Tickets to access the performance are $25 at 54below.com. Pour a glass of something bubbly and enjoy.LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESDanceEnding 2020 CalmlyA scene from Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s film “The Last Moon in Mellowland,” which is streaming until Dec. 31.Credit…Jordan Demetrius LloydIf you need a respite from holiday activities, or some space to reflect on the past year, consider spending time with Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s dreamy, entrancing short film “The Last Moon in Mellowland.” Lloyd, a Brooklyn-based dance artist, transitioned into making work for the screen when theaters shut down in March. Part of Issue Project Room’s “soft bodies in hard places,” a series organized by the curator Benedict Nguyen and timed to planetary events (like a new moon or a solstice), “Mellowland” draws the viewer into a 20-minute meditation that loosely traces the arc of a day. Lloyd describes this world as a place that “viewers already remember,” and there is a calming familiarity in its rhythms and repetitions, as the camera rests on a spinning ceiling fan or two dancers at the ocean’s edge.With performances by Lloyd, Breeanah Breeden, Ariana Speight and Demetries Morrow, and dramaturgy by Stephanie George, the film, which was released in November, is available free through Dec. 31 at issueprojectroom.org/event/last-moon-mellowland.SIOBHAN BURKEGospelAn Empty Hall Full of SpiritThe Harlem Gospel Choir will perform a livestream from Sony Hall on Friday.Credit…Simone di LucaOn the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday next month, the Harlem Gospel Choir will celebrate 35 years as one of the country’s leading contemporary gospel groups, and a globally recognized ambassador for the genre. During any normal year the choir would do a world tour at least once, and whenever it wasn’t on the road, the group would play a Sunday brunch each week at Sony Hall near Times Square, joined by a full band, bringing the sounds of praise to a mix of devotees and tourists.The group will return to (an empty) Sony Hall on Friday for the first time since March, for a special Christmas Day performance at 5 p.m. Eastern time, doing its part to sustain the spirit of communion at a social distance. Tickets to view the livestream cost $25 and can be purchased at sonyhall.com. Archived video of the performance will remain available to ticket holders through Jan. 1.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKIDSShe’s Got the BeatClockwise from top left, Emily Lang, Alexis Aguiar, Cassandra Barckett, Brian Criado, Lexy Piton and Jamiel Tako L. Burkhart in the Amas Musical Theater production of “Hip Hop Cinderella,” which is available on demand until Jan. 31.Credit…Jim RussekForget magic and fairy godmothers. The title character of “Hip Hop Cinderella” needs rap and rocket science.Charmingly played by Alexis Aguiar, she masters both in this 35-minute space-age adaptation, which streams on demand on Stellar through Jan. 31. (Tickets are $15-$25.) Presented by Amas Musical Theater in association with HipHopMusicals.com, the show still pits Cinderella against a scheming stepmother (Lexy Piton) and stepsisters (Cassandra Barckett and Emily Lang), but the prize isn’t a royal marriage. Instead, a prince (Jamiel Tako L. Burkhart) intends to crown the winner of a hip-hop ball and rap contest. With the help of her loyal robot (Brian Criado), Cinderella, a.k.a. Ella C, just might get the galaxy’s groove back.Conceived by Linda Chichester and David Coffman and directed by Christopher Scott, this production incorporates clever graphics and even a little space shuttle footage. The show, which features a book by Scott Elmegreen and music and lyrics by Rona Siddiqui, will also amuse adults when the stepmother makes a familiar-sounding complaint: “That competition was rigged!”LAUREL GRAEBERComedyThe Ultimate Kosher ChristmasJudy Gold will headline Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, which will livestream on Zoom and YouTube Live Friday through Saturday.Credit…M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesFor the first time in its 28-year history, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, a.k.a. “Jewish Comedy on Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant,” is online, which also means you needn’t go to San Francisco to enjoy the shows.The headliner is Judy Gold, who appears regularly on “The Drew Barrymore Show” and published a book this year, “Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians We Are All in Trouble.” Also performing is Alex Edelman, whose piece about attending a neo-Nazi meeting in New York, “Just for Us,” earned him a nomination for best show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018.Kung Pao Kosher Comedy’s founder, Lisa Geduldig, hosts the events, which air on Zoom and YouTube Live at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday and Friday, and at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets to access the broadcast are $25-$50 and available at cityboxoffice.com.SEAN L. McCARTHYAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Breakout Stars of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Breakout Stars of 2020Here are the 12 stars and trends that managed to thrive and shine in an impossible year.Clockwise from bottom left: Sarah Cooper, Maria Bakalova, the hand of the artist Salman Toor, Jonathan Majors and Radha Blank.Credit…Clockwise from bottom left: Lacey Terrell/Netflix; Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times; Peter Fisher for The New York Times; Adria Malcolm for The New York Times; Douglas Segars for The New York Times Dec. 23, 2020Updated 7:44 a.m. ETWhile plenty of us felt trapped this year, wandering through the same spaces and talking to the same people, it was the artists and entertainers who kicked open windows to new sights, sounds and experiences. Yes, the pandemic dealt a significant hit to the culture world, but nothing could derail its creativity. So, despite the limitations, stars in a variety of disciplines managed to thrive and shine, and by doing so, made a difficult year more tolerable for most everyone. Here are 12 artists and trends who gave us a fresh perspective in 2020.Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in the autobiographical satire “The 40-Year-Old Version.”Credit…Douglas Segars for The New York TimesFilmRadha BlankRadha Blank was the hero many of us needed in 2020, when the concept of time got an overdue interrogation. In her autobiographical satire “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” which was on Netflix, she portrays a playwright who — refusing to believe that her dreams have an expiration date — pivots to rap as a grown woman. Like her character, Blank, who grew up Brooklyn, is a 40-something playwright who knows what it’s like to fight to elevate her voice.And elevate it she did. She wrote, directed and starred in the film, her first feature, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that A.O. Scott called “a catalog of burdens and also a heroic act of unburdening.”In “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Cole explores sexual assault, truth, revenge and trauma; she also created the HBO series.Credit…Natalie Seery/HBOTelevisionMichaela CoelMichaela Coel may have created the most important TV show of 2020: “I May Destroy You.” The series, which premiered on HBO in June, is inspired by Coel’s own experience with sexual assault, and in it, she deftly plucks apart ideas around truth, revenge, anxiety, trauma and fear.Coel, a 33-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and actor, plays a writer who is drugged and raped in a bathroom stall. The assault leaves her traumatized and grappling with hazy, fragmented memories. “Coel brings a superb discipline to the portrayal of distress,” wrote Mike Hale, a TV critic at The Times.In a critic’s notebook, Salamishah Tillet, a professor and contributing critic at large for The Times, noted that the show could be considered “part of a larger cultural trend in which Black women’s experiences with sexual assault are appearing with greater frequency and treated with more sensitivity.” (She pointed to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” and TV shows like “Queen Sugar,” “The Chi” and “Lovecraft Country” as examples.)“By offering multifaceted endings,” Tillet went on, “Coel gives victims of sexual assault, particularly Black women who have survived rape, some of the most radical and cathartic moments of television I have ever witnessed.”ComedySarah CooperSarah Cooper, 43-year-old comedian, made her mark in 2020 by pantomiming the words of President Trump in viral videos that have been viewed tens of millions of times across social media. Jim Poniewozik called her first Trump lip-sync, “How to Medical,” a “49-second tour de force” and said Cooper was helping to develop “a kind of live-action political cartooning.”“Cooper’s Trumpian drag is partly a caricature of performative masculinity,” Poniewozik wrote.The success of her videos helped land Cooper a Netflix special, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by Natasha Lyonne. “This special shows that she can do much more than lip-sync,” Jason Zinoman, a comedy columnist at The Times, said of the production. “She has a promising future as an actor in television or movies.” She currently has a show in the works for CBS.Maria Bakalova, the Bulgarian actress who plays Borat’s teenage daughter in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesFilmMaria BakalovaIt’s no easy feat to stand out next to the unabashed actor-prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, but Maria Bakalova, a 24-year-old from Bulgaria, was riveting as the teenage daughter of his Borat character in his most recent mockumentary film. As the culture reporter Dave Itzkoff put it in The Times: “Sacha Baron Cohen may be the star of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ but it is Maria Bakalova who has emerged its hero.”Her performance also grabbed headlines for an edited scene involving President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is seen putting his hands down his pants in a hotel room, where Bakalova, impersonating a TV journalist, is interviewing him. He later denied any wrongdoing.About the opportunity to star in a major American film, Bakalova said: “I will be really grateful to Sacha for giving this platform to an Eastern European, to play a strong and complicated character who’s not just one thing.”Adrienne Warren was nominated for a Tony for her starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” Credit…Molly Matalon for The New York TimesTheaterAdrienne WarrenAdrienne Warren’s starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” earned her a Tony nomination in October for best actress in a musical. But it was her vocal and steadfast stand on racial injustice, including in the arts world, that brought Warren, 33, more deeply into one of the most urgent conversations of 2020. In an impassioned, impromptu speech this summer — during the Times event Offstage: Opening Night on the subject of being Black on Broadway — she questioned whether she even wanted to continue performing as part of an institution that didn’t stand up for people like her.“The last thing on my mind right now is me going back to Broadway,” Warren said. But in an interview with The Times after her nomination, she said, “I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but the question is whether I want to do it at the address I’ve been doing it.”As for what a dream role might look like for her in the future: “I want to make sure that I’m telling stories that represent me as a Black woman and also push the needle forward in ways that resonate with people, both in this nation and abroad,” she said.Jonathan Majors made a mark in both HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the Spike Lee drama “Da 5 Bloods.”Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesTelevisionJonathan MajorsJonathan Majors isn’t afraid of pain, and that may just be his secret to success. “I’m willing to hurt more,” he told Alexis Soloski in The Times over the summer. “It doesn’t bother me.”The 31-year-old star had a big year doing just that to great effect onscreen, as a Korean War veteran in the supernatural HBO thriller “Lovecraft Country,” set in 1950s Jim Crow America, and the son of a Vietnam War veteran in “Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee’s drama for Netflix that was named a Critic’s Pick in The Times by A.O. Scott.“Emotions in the men in my family run deep,” Majors told Soloski — who described him as “an actor of precision and intensity.” When asked if acting gave him a place to put those big emotions, he said: “With acting, it was almost like I was in a corridor, and it just appeared to me and said, ‘Go that way, son.’ I didn’t get in trouble once I started acting. I had a place to put the energy, to put my focus.”The artist Christine Sun Kim performing in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in Miami in February.Credit…A J Mast for The New York TimesArtChristine Sun KimIn February, just minutes ahead of the Super Bowl in Miami, the artist Christine Sun Kim stood at the 40-yard line performing in American Sign Language as Yolanda Adams sang “America the Beautiful” and Demi Lovato sang the national anthem.“As a child of immigrants, a grandchild of refugees, a Deaf woman of color, an artist and a mother, I was proud to perform,” she wrote in an Op-Ed for The Times afterward. But because only a fraction of her performance was aired, she called the experience “a huge disappointment — a missed opportunity in the struggle for media inclusiveness on a large scale.”“Being deaf in America has always been political,” she wrote.Kim, 40, who was born in California and is now based in Berlin, has spent years channeling this perspective into her art. At the Whitney Biennial in New York last year, she exhibited hand-drawn charcoal drawings from her “Degrees of Deaf Rage in the Art World,” and in 2013, the Museum of Modern Art selected her for its exhibition “Soundings: A Contemporary Score,” dedicated to sound art.“I want people to start thinking about what deafness means,” she told Vogue this year, “and maybe that will reduce the stigma and society will be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”MusicVerzuzYou could call it a battle, a face-off, a showdown. But Verzuz is also something else entirely: a pandemic pivot, cutting right to the very core of quarantine entertainment by combining livestreaming and nostalgia while filling a hole left by canceled live shows and shuttered clubs.Since April, Verzuz, the creation of Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, has streamed over 20 battles. Each one has brought together two hip-hop or R&B heavyweights: Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott, Gucci Mane vs. Jeezy, Babyface vs. Teddy Riley, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, Ludacris vs. Nelly, to name a few. Millions of people have tuned in.Initially, Verzuz was streamed on Instagram Live. In July, Verzuz and Apple Music announced they’d struck a partnership which allowed the videos to be viewed live and on-demand on that platform, too.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, called the events staples of this era and “less battles in the conventional sense than choreographed chest-puffing combined with bows of respect.” To that point, there is no winner winner. As Swizz Beatz told ABC News: “The people won, the culture won, the music won.”The artist Salman Toor has his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” up at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Peter Fisher for The New York TimesArtSalman ToorThe painter Salman Toor was about to have his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art early this year when the shutdown thwarted the whole thing. He took it pretty well. “My first reaction was, thank God,” he told The Times in June. “I’m not a social animal.” But disappointment inevitably crept in as he realized the exhibition might never happen.Thankfully for him and fans of figurative and queer art, the show eventually did go up at the Whitney, where it will appear through April. And that’s only the start for Toor. Over the summer, he joined the gallery Luhring Augustine, which will open an exhibition of his work in the next few years.Toor, 37 — who was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the United States in 2002 — primarily depicts gay men of South Asian descent. In The Times, the writer Ted Loos described Toor’s contemporary settings: “iPhones appear here and there, the glow emanating from them emphasized with bright lines.” Toor said that he aspired to represent “what this new free space is like,” referring to living an openly queer life. In Pakistan, gay sex is illegal. “People are curious to know what it means to have the freedom of so much choice, and what is the nature of that freedom and what is the cost of that.”TheaterElizabeth StanleyUp against Adrienne Warren for that Tony is Elizabeth Stanley, who was nominated for her gutting performance as Mary Jane — “a brittle tiger mom suppressing secret trauma,” as Jesse Green, a theater critic for The Times, put it — in “Jagged Little Pill,” based on Alanis Morissette’s smash album from 1995. When Broadway shut down, Stanley, 42, did not take too long before shifting her energy toward digital performances.In April, she told Deadline that she’d already been wondering about what else she could do during the pandemic: “How can I twist to this and find something new and exciting out of this time?”What came of that question epitomized what much of theater looked like in 2020: creating new digital spaces for live performance.In April, she delivered a jaw-dropping rendition of “The Miller’s Son” from “A Little Night Music,” for the acclaimed event “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration.” In June, she sang her wrenching rendition of “You Learn,” from “Jagged Little Pill,” for an Opening Night Times event on the future of Broadway. On Dec. 13, Stanley and her “Jagged Little Pill” co-stars reunited for “Jagged Live In NYC: A Broadway Reunion Concert.”Kali Uchis performing in Atlanta in 2018. She recently released the album “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).”Credit…Paul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated PressMusicKali UchisIn 2018, Kali Uchis released a debut album titled “Isolation.” Clearly she was ahead of her time. In November, the Colombian-American artist — with a moody, seductive, dance-inducing style — dropped her second studio album, this time predominantly in Spanish, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).” (Its lead single, “Aquí Yo Mando,” features the up-and-coming rapper Rico Nasty.) The album “goes genre-hopping and era-hopping, from romantically retro orchestral bolero to brittle reggaeton,” Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The Times, wrote this month.Having grown up between Colombia and the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, Uchis, 26, had many inspirations and influences, she told Interview magazine. “The last thing I ever want to do is be a predictable artist. I love that my fans never know what to expect when I drop a song.”DanceThe Year of the SoloIt wasn’t just that the coronavirus put an end to live performance in March. The need for social isolation uprooted every part of what gets a dance onto a stage: Suddenly, there were no more classes, no more rehearsals. How to fill that void? The solo.This solitary form has provided an outlet for frustration, for sadness and even for euphoria as dance artists continue to find meaning through movement. It’s true that some attempts have been sentimental and aimless, but much good has emerged from it, too. Instagram, from the start, illuminated these explorations in a steady stream of posts; choreographers worked with dancers remotely to create films in which the body could be fearless and free. “State of Darkness,” Molissa Fenley’s 1988 solo revived for seven dancers, was a glittering, harrowing reminder of the achievement that comes from strength, both internal and external.One of its interpreters, the dancer Sara Mearns, said that she saw herself as “someone that has gone through really, really hard times, but then in the end has come out stronger and on top.” Yes, dance and dancers are suffering right now. But the solo has given it — and them — a powerful voice. — Gia Kourlas, dance critic for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Catie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCatie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44On her live show “Employee of the Month,” she got laughs by interrogating writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and her fellow comics.The comedian Catie Lazarus in 2015. She began interviewing prominent people about their careers, she said, “because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in.”Credit…Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesDec. 20, 2020, 2:10 p.m. ETCatie Lazarus, a writer and comedian who probed the minds of celebrities and created her own late-night comedy universe on her longstanding self-produced live New York talk show, “Employee of the Month,” died on Dec. 13 in her apartment in Brooklyn. She was 44. Her father, Simon Lazarus III, said the cause was breast cancer.In 2011, as the nation recovered from the Great Recession, Ms. Lazarus was just another struggling comic trying to make it in New York. She had dropped out of a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Wesleyan University to move to the city, but as she tried establishing herself on the stand-up circuit, she discovered that stable jobs were hard to find. In light of these circumstances, she started hosting “Employee of the Month,” an interview-based talk show about work and labor at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.Ms. Lazarus asked notable writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and comedians how they had achieved their enviable careers. She eventually interrogated subjects like Rachel Maddow, Dick Cavett, Greta Gerwig and David Simon. She inquired about disappointment, too — for example, she asked the journalist Kurt Andersen how he felt about getting pushed out of New York magazine.“I started hosting this show because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in,” Ms. Lazarus told The New York Times in 2015. “I wanted to hear from people who, for the most part, love what they do and have carved out a niche for themselves. It wasn’t just about how they broke in, but what they continue to find worth struggling for, worth the heartache and the rejection and the economic toil and other types of losses that go along with it.”Her disarmingly intrusive interview style developed a following, and in 2014 Ms. Lazarus started hosting the show monthly at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. A live band accompanied her onstage, and nights crackled with the spontaneous energy of late-night television.Ms. Lazarus with her house band at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in 2017.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus approached her inquiries from a more philosophical level as well, seemingly trying to answer a bigger question: Why exactly do people do what they do for a living during their relatively brief time on earth? She often steered guests into illuminating revelations and spectacle.Wallace Shawn reminisced about how he had considered becoming a taxi driver. Billy Crudup whispered something to her when she asked him how much he was paid for voicing Mastercard ads (she looked shocked). Gloria Steinem tap-danced onstage. And Ms. Lazarus asked Josh Russ Tupper, a co-owner of Russ & Daughters, to participate in a blind taste test of lox from his competitors Zabar’s and Barney Greengrass.“They said you can tell the difference in the lox,” she challenged him. “Do you feel there’s a difference in how your lox tastes?” (Mr. Tupper largely succeeded in identifying his shop’s salmon.)Lin-Manuel Miranda, who appeared on the show, was also a frequent guest in her audience. “Catie was the ultimate New York comedy connector,” he said in a phone interview. “Once you did the show, you were in the alumni group.” He added: “It’s unbelievable the level of connections that came through there. People before they blew up. After they blew up.”“It was,” Mr. Miranda said, “sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show.”Catherine Simone Avnet Lazarus was born on April, 26, 1976, in Washington. Her father was a public policy lawyer who had been associate director of the White House domestic policy staff in the Carter administration. Her mother, Rosalind (Avnet) Lazarus, was a federal government lawyer. A great-great-great-grandfather was Simon Lazarus, founder of the Lazarus & Company department store chain, which later became Macy’s Inc.A nursery report card from the Beauvoir School appeared to portend Ms. Lazarus’s future. “Katie is a great talker and will volunteer to sit in the ‘hot seat’ and speak on any topic whether she knows anything about her subject or not,” it read. “The class expects this now and, in fact, the resulting arguments are more lively due to Katie’s proddings.” (Ms. Lazarus delighted in this document as an adult and quoted from it frequently).She attended the Maret School and Wesleyan University, where she received a B.A. and an M.A. in psychology. She eventually pursued a doctorate in clinical psychology at Wesleyan but dropped out after a semester to try comedy in New York. (Ms. Lazarus said that an encouraging chance encounter with Tina Fey, in which they discussed improv, helped galvanize her decision.)Ms. Lazarus first took the stage at Stand Up NY on the Upper West Side, and she relished the nervous rush of trying to get people to laugh. She began performing on the comedy circuit at clubs like Carolines on Broadway and the Laugh Factory. And she took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, where she started hosting her show. Early guests included Rachel Dratch, Reggie Watts and the Times journalist David Carr.“I was keenly aware that people went on to achieve these great things,” Ms. Lazarus told The Times. “I just didn’t know the steps that were involved to get there. That is why I started my show, because there is somewhat of a science to success.”In 2015, Ms. Lazarus had a career break herself when Jon Stewart gave her his first interview after leaving “The Daily Show.” She pressed Mr. Stewart about his next projects and who he thought might replace him on the show. While discussing his career, she projected an image of him wearing underwear in a spoof of a Calvin Klein ad from his MTV talk-show days.Around 2017, Ms. Lazarus ended her run at Joe’s Pub and brought her show to other venues, including the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan and the Bell House in Brooklyn. Slate started airing a podcast of the show in 2018. Ms. Lazarus also took the show on the road, hosting it at Largo in Los Angeles and at the Sundance Film Festival.“All these people over the years, they wanted to be interviewed by her,” her father said. “And she shot for the moon. She really thought she could get anybody. She thought she could get Barack Obama. She didn’t get him, but she wasn’t shy about trying.”In addition to her father, Ms. Lazarus is survived by two brothers, Ned and Benjamin; her mother; and her stepmother, Bonnie Walter.In 2019, Ms. Lazarus took a break from her talk show. She had learned she had breast cancer in 2014 and underwent chemotherapy for years. She also wanted to finish a book of personal essays she was working on. As the pandemic took hold of life in New York, Ms. Lazarus spent her time at her apartment in Prospect Heights, writing in the company of her cocker spaniel, Lady.Ms. Lazarus at Joe’s Pub in 2016. “It was sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show,” Lin-Manuel Miranda said.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus always hoped her show might get picked up by a network or streaming service, and she was vocal about the gender disparity among late-night television hosts.“Showbiz has notoriously rewarded those who fail upwards,” she told Out magazine in 2018. “If and when Hollywood is ready for a talk-show host with chops, chutzpah, humor, no cavities and a genuine moral compass, will you tell them where to find me?”In her Times interview, Ms. Lazarus was asked what her own dream job was. She answered definitively.“What I do right now,” she said. “Hosting a talk show. I found mine, but it wasn’t intentional.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      BBC’s ‘Pandemonium’ and Covid-19: Are We Ready to Laugh About the Virus?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAre We Ready to Laugh About Covid-19? A British Sitcom Hopes SoWith ‘Pandemonium,’ the BBC is betting that an audience will find humor in reliving the ordeals of a very awful year.The cast of the BBC comedy “Pandemonium,” set during the coronavirus pandemic.Credit…Andrew Hayes Watkins/BBC StudiosDec. 16, 2020, 12:26 p.m. ETA British family is walking along a frigid beach, treating a fall vacation like it’s a restaurant entree everyone wants to send back to the kitchen. The whole expedition is a lame Plan B. The Jessups were originally going to Disneyland, followed by three days of hiking at Yosemite. Then the coronavirus struck and sunny California was out of the question. Now the clan is making do in Margate, a forlorn British seaside town that peaked decades ago.Paul Jessup, the paterfamilias, is depressed for a long list of reasons, including the loss of his job running an archery club. His wife, Rachel, is trying to remain upbeat and had hoped that the vacation would recharge the couple’s sex life. She packed an erotic outfit and a sex toy for just that purpose. But as the pair stand alone for a moment, Paul confesses that he just isn’t ready for it.“I love that you want to experiment with stuff,” he quietly tells her, “but I think I’ve gone off the idea of using the gear.”“Well, I wish I’d known that before squeezing it into the suitcase,” Rachel replies. “Leather is extremely difficult to fold, you realize.”Jim Howick and Katherine Parkinson, who play a married couple dealing with living through the pandemic, during filming in November.Credit…Andrew Hayes Watkins/BBC StudiosThis awkward exchange is brought to you by the BBC. It’s a scene from the pilot episode of “Pandemonium,” a half-hour comedy, set to air Dec. 30, that poses a bold question: Are we ready to laugh about Covid-19? Or rather, is there anything amusing, or recognizable in a humorous way, about life during a plague, with all of its indignities and setbacks, not to mention its rituals (clapping for health care workers) and rules (face masks, please).Television has already tackled life under quarantine, with shows such as “Connecting” on NBC and “Social Distance” on Netflix. But they focused on online conversations, largely restricting the characters to the cameras in front of their computers. “Pandemonium” is at once more conventional and bolder. The story unfolds in the family’s house, its car and then on vacation — a high-degree-of-difficulty venture in the midst of a pandemic.The challenges are evident on a brisk November afternoon, as the cast and crew mill around a railing by a stretch of beach in Margate. It is the final day of a six-day shoot, and the director, Ella Jones, is orchestrating a few takes of Paul (played by Jim Howick) explaining his sex toy change of heart to Rachel (Katherine Parkinson). Hair and makeup artists hover, a small production team arranges and tweaks cameras, microphones and monitors.As in every television production, the roughly 30 people at work here look like a nomadic tribe with a lot of expensive equipment. But Covid-19 has imposed a host of unusual restrictions and protocols. Everyone wears a colored wrist band. Red means you are part of the testing regime and can get close to the actors. Yellow means you are not part of the regime and must keep your time near the red bands to a minimum.As an added precaution, actors are prohibited from touching car door handles. A full-time production assistant, a sort of Covid cop, is charged with roaming the set and ensuring that virus protection rules are being followed.“I think she’s telling those people to stand farther apart from each other,” said Tom Basden, who wrote “Pandemonium” and plays Robin, Rachel’s depressed and chain-smoking brother. He was pointing to the woman policing coronavirus guidelines, who, it turned out, was squeezing sanitizer into the hands of a scrum of people.Tom Basden, who wrote “Pandemonium,” plays the depressed and chain-smoking character Robin.Credit…Andrew Hayes Watkins/BBC StudiosMr. Basden’s original script was Covid-19 free. The idea was to write a comedy about a family that was filmed entirely by the son — sometimes surreptitiously, usually not — with his video camera, a GoPro camera and a drone he bought himself. The lad was less a snoop than a budding documentarian. The conceit would give the standard family comedy a mockumentary twist.The BBC’s head of comedy, Shane Allen, greenlit the project, and until May, he resisted the idea that the show should even mention Covid-19. One of his goals is to make programs that feel ageless, ensuring a long run on iPlayer, the BBC’s increasingly popular on-demand platform. There were 3.1 billion iPlayer streams in the first six months of the year, up nearly 50 percent from 2019, the BBC reported in August.Shane Allen, the BBC’s head of comedy, initially resisted retooling the show to incorporate Covid-19, worried that it could make the show quickly feel dated.Credit…Alex Atack for The New York TimesInitially, Mr. Allen thought that a show centered around Covid-19 would quickly feel dated. But by May, the virus had killed so many and upended lives around the world in such a way that it had become both unnerving and familiar. On April 20, the Sun, a British tabloid, ran this unforgettable teaser on its front page: “596 dead. See page 4.”“By then, it felt like this huge political and social issue that we had to tackle,” he said in a recent interview. “We just needed to find a way to do it that was both cathartic and inoffensive.”Selling Mr. Basden on a Covid rewrite was easy.“I realized that there was a version of the story, which is about a California holiday not being taken because of coronavirus, that felt interesting to me,” Mr. Basden said. “I felt it had the potential to sum up the year for a lot of families in terms of what their experience has been, with all of the various disappointments along the way.”Whether Britons need a “cov-com,” as Mr. Allen dubbed the show, remains to be seen. Viewers may prefer to watch anything but a reflection of what they have just lived through. If you’re looking for pure escapism, a show in which a doctor on television is heard intoning, “Stay inside, wash your hands, follow the guidelines,” isn’t for you. Alternatively, the show could turn the ordeals imposed by Covid into bittersweet entertainment by demonstrating just how universal their effect has been.The show starts at a moment that now feels like eight years ago — namely, early 2020. The Jessups are booking their flights to California and Paul decides not to spend another $30 or so per ticket for refundable fares.“We’re not going to cancel,” he tells his wife. “That’s just a scam to make idiots pay more money.”The upbeat mood evaporates as the virus arrives. It shuts down Paul’s archery club, rendering him jobless. Robin, Mr. Basden’s character, is jilted by a woman who leaves him for her personal trainer. Now-familiar tensions and debates surface. At first, Paul’s mother, Sue, won’t take the virus seriously, exasperating her son. She also refuses to join in nationwide applause for National Health Service workers on Thursday nights.“Clapping?” she asks Paul, outraged at the thought. “After they cancel my hip replacement? Are you mad? I’m the only one on my street booing.”There are jokes that would fly over the heads of an American audience, like a reference to Dominic Cummings, the since-dismissed adviser to Boris Johnson, who made headlines by flouting lockdown rules. Other bits suggest that the United States still has substantial cultural heft here. When Paul tries to convince his daughter, Amy (Freya Parks), that he is woke, he proves it by noting that he read and loved Michelle Obama’s book.For the BBC, the show isn’t the sort of gamble that it would be for any other British or U.S. network. The Beeb, as it is known, is supported by taxpayers, who are required by law to hand over the equivalent of $210 dollars a year for a license to watch live television. (Yes, watching without a license is a criminal offense, and it can cost offenders about $1,300 in fines plus court costs.) But the show is an ambitious bet. It will air on BBC1, essentially the nation’s default network and home to the programming with the broadest appeal. A comedy that finds an audience on BBC1 can turn into a cultural institution.“There’s a lot of risk and a lot of failure when it comes to comedy,” said Mr. Allen. “But the things that do well stick around for years. Last year, Monty Python turned 50, and the surviving cast members did 10 sold-out shows at the O2 Arena. No other genre has longevity like that. Monty Python episodes are evergreens.”“There’s a lot of risk and a lot of failure when it comes to comedy,” said Mr. Allen. “But the things that do well stick around for years.”Credit…Alex Atack for The New York TimesIf the pilot for “Pandemonium” gets good ratings and credible reviews, a full season will be ordered and it will begin filming sometime next year.Putting together the pilot was, for obvious reasons, complicated. To keep preproduction, in-person meetings to a minimum, several members of the cast auditioned by sending homemade recordings of themselves reading their lines into a mobile phone.“I sat in my bedroom and put my iPhone on a tripod and my girlfriend read the other character,” said Jack Christou, who plays Ben, the Jessups’ son and budding videographer. “Then I sent it off to my agent and waited.”Soon he was getting a Covid test so that he could join other cast members for a few days of reading through the script at a BBC studio in White City, a district of London. Executives watched via Zoom. The Jessups’ home was filmed in Mill Hill, a suburb of London, over the course of three days. The wristband system was introduced, and anyone with a red band was tested daily. Yellow bands could enter the house for a few minutes if the actors were not in it.“I was doing a shoot in Cornwall for another show, and they had to close it down because someone came down with Covid,” Mr. Basden said. “I think that has happened quite a lot, particularly on shoots that are for any length of time. We’re lucky this is just six days.”The last three days were shot in Margate with the actors staying at a hotel where all the indoor common space was closed off. Many of the show’s vacation scenes take place outdoors, which curtailed Covid anxiety. The final scene shot on the last day of production follows the Jessups as they digest the news, read to them by Amy on her mobile phone, that Britain is going into its second lockdown, the one that started in October. Two members of the family decide on the spot that it’s time to end this cursed vacation.“No, we are not going home!” Rachel shouts. “Let’s just press on for as long as we legally can.”The scene was repeated a few times, with the director offering notes between each take. After the last one, the show officially wrapped, and the cast and crew whooped, celebrated and congratulated each other. Many couldn’t help offering Covid-be-damned hugs. Actors and crew posed on the beach for a photographer who wanted to capture the moment before everyone went home.“Put on your masks,” someone in the bunch said. “The BBC is going to see this.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Best Comedy of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookBest Comedy of 2020Comedians like Leslie Jones, Chelsea Handler and Hannibal Buress adjusted to the new abnormal, turning to Zoom, YouTube, rooftops and parks.The pandemic halted most live performance but comedians adjusted and adapted. Clockwise from bottom left: Leslie Jones, Eddie Pepitone, John Wilson and Ziwe Fumudoh.Credit…Clockwise from bottom left: Rahim Fortune for The New York Times; Troy Conrad; HBO; Chase Hall for The New York TimesDec. 15, 2020, 5:59 p.m. ETThe comedy boom finally busted. Not only did the pandemic shut down comedy institutions, but New York clubs like Dangerfield’s, which was half a century old, and the stalwart The Creek & the Cave closed for good, as did the city’s branches of the improv powerhouse, the Upright Citizens Brigade. At the same time, comedians adjusted to the new abnormal, transitioning to Zoom and Instagram Live, and to shows in parks and on rooftops. It was a period of experimentation and stagnancy, contraction and accessibility, despair and occasional joy. In a low year, here were the highlights:Funniest SpecialDo you find an angry blue-collar guy yelling about being high on molly funny? Does the phrase “Stalin on Spotify” amuse you? Do pivots from ragingly unhinged roars to an NPR voice make you lose your breath in laughter? No? Not to worry: Eddie Pepitone will still delight. An overlooked master of the form, he’s perfected a persona of the silly grump that makes anything funny. Smart comedy that aims for the gut, his new special (available on Amazon Prime) is titled “For the Masses,” but he jokes that is by necessity, in one of several insults of his audience: “I would be doing jokes about Dostoyevsky if it wasn’t for you.”After leaving “Saturday Night Live” in 2019, Leslie Jones had a viral year that included the Netflix special “Time Machine.”Credit…Bill Gray/NetflixBest Complaint About 20-SomethingsLeslie Jones made the most of her first year after “Saturday Night Live.” Not only did she go viral roasting the clothes, furniture and décor of cable news talking heads in social media videos, but she made a dynamite Netflix special, “Time Machine,” where she castigated today’s young people for failing to have fun. “Every 20-year-old’s night,” she preached, “should end with glitter and cocaine.”Best 20-Something CounterAbout six weeks after the release of Jones’s special, the breakout young comic Taylor Tomlinson made an impressive Netflix debut with “Quarter-Life Crisis”; in it, she says she’s sick of people telling her to enjoy her 20s. “They’re not fun,” she said exasperated, in one of many cleverly crafted bits. “They’re 10 years of asking myself: Will I outgrow this or is this a problem?”Best Opening GambitBy describing her special in detail, beat by beat, at the start of Netflix’s “Douglas” — Hannah Gadsby’s follow-up to “Nanette” — she seemed to be eliminating the most important element of comedy: surprise. But like Penn & Teller deconstructing the secrets of magic while hiding some new ones, she just found a new way to fool you.In his YouTube special “Miami Nights,” Hannibal Buress told a story about an encounter with a police officer that led to his arrest.Credit…Isola Man MediaBest Closing StoryIn his funniest and most stylish special, “Miami Nights,” on YouTube, Hannibal Buress ended on a 20-minute story about an unsettling encounter with a police officer in Miami that led to his arrest. It’s a master class in comic storytelling that sent himself up, skewered the police, hit bracingly topical notes with throwaway charm while adding on a coda that provided the visceral pleasures of payback. It’s stand-up with the spirit of a Tarantino movie.Best Silver LiningOne nice side effect of the shutdown for live comedy is that in transitioning to digital, local shows became accessible to everyone with an internet connection. So it was a nostalgic treat that the weekly Los Angeles showcase Hot Tub, which pioneered weird comedy in New York before moving to the West Coast, once again became part of my comedy diet, via Twitch. While there were many new faces, much hadn’t changed, like the eclectic and adventurous booking and the dynamite chemistry of its hosts Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler.Best Alfresco SpecialStreet comedy, a subgenre of some legend, was all but dead when the pandemic pushed stand-up outdoors. By the fall, several comics, like Chelsea Handler and Colin Quinn, even made specials there, working crowds whose laughter did not echo against walls. The sharpest was “Up on the Roof” by the workhorse comic Sam Morril (it’s his second punchline-dense special of the year), the rare person to translate New York club comedy to rooftops (with the help of cameras on drones).Cole Escola portrays a cabaret performer in his YouTube special, “Help! I’m Stuck! With Cole Escola.”Credit…Cole EscolaBest Sketch ComicWhen comedic dynamo Cole Escola produced his own special featuring deliriously bizarre characters wrapped in pitch-perfect genre spoofs, and released it on YouTube under the title “Help! I’m Stuck! With Cole Escola,” he was surely not trying to embarrass networks and streaming services for never placing him at the center of his own show. But that’s what he did.Best New Talk ShowThe charismatic Ziwe Fumudoh has long been comfortable creating and sitting in the tension between the comedian and the audience in small alt rooms, but in her interview show on Instagram, she repurposed this gift for cringe and applied it to probing conversations on racism with guests like Caroline Calloway and Alison Roman. It made for essential viewing during a protest-filled summer.Best Siblings“I Hate Suzie” provided serious competition, but the best British comic import this year was “Stath Lets Flats,” which found a home on HBO Max. This brilliantly observed office comedy focuses on the mundane travails of an awful real estate agent and his sister. Jamie Demetriou (who created the show) starred, along with his real-life sister Natasia, better known in the United States because of her dynamite deadpan in the FX vampire comedy “What We Do in the Shadows.” The show is cringe comedy whose beating heart comes from their relationship. Look out Sedaris siblings. A new talent family has arrived.The stand-up comic Beth Stelling released a special on HBO Max titled “Girl Daddy.”Credit…HBO MaxBest Debut SpecialThe stand-up comic Beth Stelling’s pinned tweet is from 2015: “I’ve been called a ‘female comic’ so many times, I’ll probably only be able to answer to ‘girl daddy’ when I have children.” This year, she released a knockout special on HBO Max titled “Girl Daddy.” It’s a virtuosic performance, conversational while dense with jokes — with a portrait of her father, an actor who works as a pirate at an Orlando mini-golf course, that manages to be scathing, loving and sort of over it, all at the same time.Best Experimental ComedyIt’s a good sign for adventurous work that last year’s winner (Natalie Palamides’s solo shocker “Nate”) is now a Netflix special. But the revelation this year was HBO’s “How To With John Wilson,” a kind of reality show about New York City that pushed formal boundaries while unearthing the hidden and the overlooked in poignant, funny new ways.Best DirectionIn one of her final projects, Lynn Shelton masterfully shot the latest Marc Maron special “End Times Fun,” on Netflix, demonstrating that great direction doesn’t need to be about showy camera movements. Her shot sequences emphasized and played against Maron’s jokes, working together effortlessly, like dancing partners that intimately know each other’s moves. Two months later, in May, she died of a blood disorder. Memorializing her movingly on his podcast, Maron, her boyfriend, said: “I was better in Lynn Shelton’s gaze.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More