QuaranstreamFest: The best stand-up comedy to stream at home
David Farnor | On 21, Mar 2020
Every summer, comedians, performers, writers, dancers and musicians descend upon Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. Over 24 days, more than 50,000 performances take place in hundreds of venues throughout the Scottish capital. The result is the country’s biggest celebration of arts and culture, and a wonderful showcase for a vibrant, diverse wave of stand-up comics, both new and established, all looking to find an audience.
In this streaming age, though, discovering your new favourite stand-up stars is easier than ever at any time of year – and even when you’re unable to leave the house due to the coronavirus pandemic. From Amazon Prime Video and Netflix to stand-up subscription service NextUp, we round up some of the best stand-up talents available to watch in your living room.
Laura Lexx
Laura Lexx is the kind of stand-up comedian who immediately makes you want to be their friend – an effect that’s the result of both her extreme candour about her own life and the fact that she’s hilarious. While the Brighton-based comic wins more positive reviews and fans at the 2019 Fringe with her topical special Kneejerk (one word: netball), her 2016 show, Tyrannosaurus Lexx, sees her delve into family relationships, while tackling the challenge of being a married couple, all served up with a bubbly charisma, a long fringe and an acutely observed balance of 90s nostalgia and new media angst. Think Sarah Millican or Victoria Wood for a new generation, then stop thinking and start telling your actual friends.
Show
Tyrannosaurus Lexx
Available on
NextUp (£9.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Hannah Gadsby
“I’ve made my story into a joke,” Hannah Gadsby tells us in her comedy special, Nanette. It’s the starting point of all stand-up, the foundation of the form: experience becomes anecdote, situation becomes set-up, resolution becomes punchline. But Gadsby, as she breaks these rules down for us, turns her personal tale into something much more than your average stand-up set. It’s humour as a weapon, laughter as a counterpoint to anger. The result is an astonishing, powerful special that will destroy you – and possibly comedy too. (Read our full review)
Show
Nanette
Available on
Netflix (£8.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Flo and Joan
Anyone who’s seen a Nationwide advert in the last few years is probably already familiar with Flo an Joan, a duo who tickled the ivories for the building society over the Christmas period. If you think that’s the extent of their musical stylings, though, prepare to be pleasantly surprised, as their tricksy, witty ditties soon wrap you up in their deceptively intricate rhymes and enjoyably offbeat off-beats. There are easy targets in their choice of songs, from binge-drinking to Daily Mail readers, but there’s an enjoyably deadpan quality to their performance – complete with egg shaker – that’s all their own. The pair are driven by a charming combination of cynicism and rhyming, which really sparks to life when tackling the subjects they’re most annoyed about, whether that’s Doritos crisps for women or propositions received on social media. Part of Amazon’s new line-up of original stand-up specials from British comedians, it’s a deserved platform for a promising homegrown double-act.
Show
Alive on Stage
Available on
Amazon Prime Video (£5.99 a month)
Nish Kumar
Nish is on fire in his current tour, It’s in Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves, which makes it no surprise that he was selected as a UK comedian for Netflix’s Comedians of the World showcase. But The Mash Report host dials down the satire that he normally deploys for his streaming showcase, instead laying into the board game Monopoly and why it’s a fundamentally harmful thing to play with your family and kids. He’s brash, confident, witty and constantly praises himself for being all of those things – it’s a perfect half-hour demonstration of what makes him an interesting talent, without duplicating the scorching material from Fringe show.
Show
Comedians of the World
Available on
Netflix (£8.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Rachel Parris
Nish’s fellow star of The Mash Report is at the Fringe with fellow improvisers Marcus Brigstocke, Pippa Evans and Paul Foxcroft, but NextUp gives you a chance to see her shine in her own right, and she doesn’t disappoint. Best Laid Plans sees her breezily drift between songs and stories of adulthood, hopping from musical theatre numbers to jazz riffs, each number stitched together with witty lyrics, a catchy energy and her signature outrageous deadpan served with a scathingly sharp positivity.
Show
Best Laid Plans
Available on
NextUp (£9.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Daniel Cook
Some people can people you laugh just with their voice. Daniel Cook can make you laugh with a single look. He heads to 2019’s Fringe alongside Rose Johnson (Two Gorgeous Stand-Ups), but you can taste his manic energy and frenzied rage from anywhere in the country with For Money, available on NextUp (and categorised, aptly, in the Angry section). His impossibly funny facial expressions and pointed stares are worth watching for alone, and his frenetic pacing is infectiously unusual, but the physical comedy and verbal tics secretly hide an impeccable sense of timing and storytelling.
Show
For Money
Available on
NextUp (£9.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Joz Norris
Joz Norris is not your typical stand-up comedian. He doesn’t deliver punchlines as much as he drifts off down every conversational tangent possible. He has a bizarre, disarming conversational style that doesn’t shy away from any topic, all pieced together with the kind of off-the-cuff chaos that conceals a carefully crafted string of stories and anecdotes, which covers his upbringing and more with a free range likeability. All the while, he weaves a web for himself out of string that seems to have no purpose, but teases with its promise of a bigger picture. The result is compellingly offbeat and enjoyably relaxed, and topped off by a surreal, disturbing, laugh-out-loud stunt involving a baby.
Show
The Incredible Joz Norris Locks Himself Inside His Own Show, Then Escapes, Against All the Odds!!
Available on
NextUp (£9.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Eleanor Morton
Positioned somewhere between the warmth and whimsy of a well-knit jumper and the scathing bitter cynicism of an old person, Eleanor Morton’s stand-up is wound wonderfully tight – and unwinds on stage with a tell-all exhale of awkward honesty. Tackling her anxiety and her fears, her subject matter is delicately spiky, but it’s the little details that mark her out as one to watch: the way she pronounces random words in an unusual way never feels to get a giggle, while her musical interludes, including a savage parody of Jessie J and a world-weary ode to clubbing, are quietly excellent.
Show
Lollipop
Available on
NextUp (£9.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Josie Long
Back at the Fringe with a new show for the first time in five years, tackling new motherhood, Josie Long’s Live from the BBC showcase is a perfect introduction to the comic’s unique mix of political awareness, quiet rage at the state of the world and – underneath it all – a relentless drive for kindness and happiness that gives even her most political tirades a warm, engaging quality.
Show
Live from the BBC
Available on
BBC iPlayer (Free)
Stewart Lee
If you’ve missed his work-in-progress show at the Fringe this year, don’t miss the chance to binge through the whole of his hysterical Comedy Vehicle. The series, which comprises recordings of 30-minute sets from his various tours, is a box set stuffed with smug tirades and educated, middle-class opinions, all designed to ruin stand-up comedy as we know it. For those who don’t like his intellectual concerns and patronising tone, he’s impossible to tolerate. For those who do, he makes it impossible to tolerate other comedians. That’s the brilliance of Stewart Lee’s stand-up: either way, everyone ends up miserable.
Show
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle
Available on
Amazon Prime (£5.99 a month)
Sofie Hagen
The Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer winner is talking about memory at the 2019 Fringe, but you’ll certainly remember her stint on Live from the BBC, which hilariously captures her strangely engaging style of storytelling. From an unusual sexual encounter some very intense fan fiction, Hagen constantly gives the sense that she’s confiding in only a select few people, delivering each anecdote with an unpredictable air and a winning honesty.
Show
Live from the BBC
Available on
BBC iPlayer (Free)
Ivo Graham
Describing his own work as “anxious blather”, Ivo Graham is fully aware of precisely the kind of person he is: the kind who’s not the favourite child of his parents just the most available, who wears his elite eduction on his sleeve and spends most of his time mocking it, and who hops between topics with a crafty wit that ensures his nervous energy always keeps you watching.
Show
Live from the BBC
Available on
BBC iPlayer (Free)
Ed Gamble
Viewers of Mock the Week might recognise Ed Gamble, a London comedian who has become known for having diabetes – something that he promptly takes to task in his first special. Performed as Blizzard at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe and retitled Blood Sugar for its release on Amazon Prime Video as an Amazon original, diabetes is at the heart of his set, and while that might sound unusual, it’s all the better for that. He races through all manner of topics, from his dad writing emails to the vet impersonating his cat to playing the bassoon, but it’s when he’s dissecting diabetes that he really shines, managing a deceptively tricky balance between informative and enlightening insights into the condition and a constant string of easygoing laughs that are at once self-deprecating and sharply critical of the ridiculous world around him. The result won’t exactly leave your pulse racing, but this is a promising hour from a comedian whose frank charisma makes him hard not to like.
Show
Blood Sugar
Available on
Amazon Prime Video (£5.99 a month)
Max & Ivan
In a sea of stand-up comics and solo outings, it’s always a joy to see some multi-character sketch comedy both at the Fringe and at home. Max & Ivan are up there with The Pin and Famalam for modern skits, and The Reunion is a slick, silly, supremely funny demonstration of their skills. Taking the form of a high school reunion, the resulting story weaves together flashbacks and callbacks with a teen movie nostalgia that leaves you splitting your sides and unsure about what exactly will happen next.
Show
The Reunion
Available on
NextUp (£9.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Bridget Christie
Bridget Christie is a blazing tour de force of righteous anger at a world that has been ruined by men for far too long. Her astute disassembling of patriarchal constructs is at once hilarious and rousing – it’s no wonder that she took home the main Edinburgh Comedy Award back in 2013. Stand Up for Her, essentially a best-of from several shows, is a showcase of one of Britain’s most interesting, exciting, and hysterical voices on the circuit. You’ll never look at yoghurt, pens or TV adverts in the same way again.
Show
Stand Up for Her
Available on
Netflix (£8.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
James Acaster
In a Netflix first, James Acaster has released four stand-up specials (Recognise, Represent, Reset, and Recap) as a single series. Collecting together a string of material nominated multiple times for the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, this is a dizzyingly unique piece of comedy that combines absurd British wit with something approaching performance art in its own right. (Read our full review)
Show
Repertoire
Available on
Netflix (£8.99 a month – 30 day free trial)
Felicity Ward
Another comedian given a deserving spotlight by BBC Three’s Live from the BBC is Felicity Ward, who heads to BBC’s Radio Theatre to record a 30-minute set. The Australian comic gets half an episode to impress and her sharp dissection of toilet attendants and insomnia is balanced with an unpredictable delivery that keeps you on your toes. There’s a frantic, non-stop style to her delivery, which she harnesses to build a persona of insecurity and neuroses that’s so entirely convincing it just might be true. It’s testament to how effective it is that you get swept up in her hyper energy even when it’s only on camera.
Show
Live from the BBC
Available on
BBC iPlayer (free)
Iliza Shlesinger
The 2008 winner of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Iliza is one of the most prolific comics on Netflix and with good reason. Her skills are perhaps best showcased by her fourth special, Elder Millennial, which shrewdly drills into the tint gulfs that can exist between members of the same generation. That line of observational comedy is deployed frequently to examine her primary topic: the differences between men and women. While it’s a familiar subject and has many easy targets, she tackles it with an exuberance that stops either party from being offended, and a physicality that matches her energetic delivery.
Show
Elder Millennial
Available on
Netflix UK (£8.99 a month)
Dave Chappelle
Dave Chapelle can be a divisive figure, and some of his more recent comments have toyed with causing offence a little too much, but he’s also an insightful commentator with a razor-sharp wit and a strong grasp of the weight each single word can have. That’s particularly potent in his surprise 30-minute special release earlier this year in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
Show
Equanimity / 8:46
Available on
Netflix UK (£8.99 a month)
Chris Rock
Chris Rock recently made his first return to the stand-up mic in 10 years, and he proves why he’s been missed. His special combines personal reflection and candid analysis of his own relationships with a sharp social commentary.
Show
Tamborine
Available on
Netflix UK (£8.99 a month)
Dave Gorman
The man who became famous by finding other people with the same name as him has never lost that neurotic, narrow-focused drive and he puts it to fantastic work in Modern Life Is Goodish. Somewhere in the vicinity of Adam Buxton’s Bug, he cues up clips from a range of property TV shows and makes fun of them. Or he tackles such topics as how to store cereal in cupboards without taking up unnecessary space or how to tell the difference between branded and unbranded wheat bisks. But over the course of each hour, you begin to appreciate just how much effort goes into his gags, which combine audio, video, eggs and more to fantastic comic effect. More stand-up lecture than stand-up comedy and all the better for it.
Show
Modern Life Is Goodish
Available on
UKTV Play (Free)
Middleditch & Schwartz
Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz bring their two-person act to Netflix with three specials improvised around audience suggestions. From a dream job to law school magic to a parking lot wedding, the result is a madcap, frenetic affair that’s infectiously silly and bursts with hilarious energy.
Show
Middleditch & Schwartz
Available on
Netflix UK (£8.99 a month)
Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah has proven a divisive figure ever since he took over from Jon Stewart as the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. That was five years ago and, since then, the South African comic has increasingly impressed as his own strengths have emerged. His two Netflix specials are ideal showcases for his understated, conversational style, fusing personal anecdotes, politics and flawless impressions in a laidback package.
Show
Afraid of the Dark / Son of Patricia
Available on
Netflix UK (£8.99 a month)
Reggie Watts
Gleefully absurd and deceptively deep, Reggie Watts doesn’t hold back on the surreal when he’s behind the mic, and his Netflix special ends up as unique as you’d expect – a flurry of non-sequiturs that picks apart the very concept of stand-up and puts it back together again.
Show
Spatial
Available on
Netflix UK (£8.99 a month)
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