Top 10 Netflix Stand-Up Comedy Specials

So what's the deal with stand-up specials?

I don't know about you, fellow reader, but I've sure needed my dose of comedy in the last few months, and I've most certainly had the extra time to watch a lot of stuff. As the world is currently in such a chaotic state on many fronts, I figured I could share some recommendations of pure comedy to lighten up everyone's day. If you like stand-up comedy and have Netflix, chances are you'd enjoy several of this list's entries (even if you aren't all that into stand-up, it still might be worth a shot to try one of these out - you never know!).

Here are my honorable mentions: James Acaster: Recognize (2018), Jimmy Carr: Funny Business (2016), Pete Davidson: Alive From New York (2020)

10. Dave Chappelle: Sticks And Stones (2019)

I could write so much about Sticks And Stones, a viewing experience more philosophical than the other items on this list combined. Dave Chappelle's trademark controversial humor is never more controversial than it is here, and watching it works as an ethical dilemma on what things should and shouldn't be joked about. The fact that this special has an 8.5 on IMDB (that's extremely high for a stand-up special) is proof that our world isn't as polarized as it often seems: Chappelle's commentary is so liberally inclined that ultra-conservative people surely wouldn't like it, but the man is also so politically incorrect that he wouldn't do well with an ultra-woke audience either. The high IMDB rating stands as a much-needed testament to humanity finding some common ground.

I'll admit that some of the jokes in the special were too far even for my tastes, although I'm generally quite a fan of dark humor and norm-defying entertainment. While some of Chappelle's humor is controversial in an absolutely delicious way, other parts really made me question what things should be joked about and what shouldn't - but that's exactly what I like about Sticks And Stones. There's no definitive answer to this question, but it's an interesting one to think about, and thus this comedy special makes for a fascinating experiment of thought on the subject of borderline humor and the limits of free speech.

9. Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours To Kill (2020)

If you would've told me beforehand that Jerry Seinfeld, the king of the stand-up genre, would release his first Netflix stand-up show while I was in the process of writing this list, and that it would only end up at #9, I wouldn't have believed you. I'm a huge Seinfeld fan, and his bits of stand-up comedy in the iconic Seinfeld (1989-1998) are often my favorite part - I was pretty sure that his special would be a top contender for this list of mine. But as it turns out, it wasn't nearly as good as it could've been - but still awesome enough to make it this high on my list. Kathryn VanArendonk of The Vulture summed my feelings up in the genius title to her review of Jerry's show: "Jerry Seinfeld's 23 Hours To Kill is great (and also sucks)". It references the bit in Seinfeld's routine where he talks about how "great" and "sucks" are close to being the same thing, but it turns out to be quite true in this case.

The problem I had with the show was the second half. Seinfeld talks about his marriage, in a way that is quite common for the comedy norms of previous generations, but feels quite out of date in 2020. Places #6 and #3 on this list of mine are great examples of modern comedians joking about their marriage in a healthy manner without being overtly mean or slightly sexist with their tone, but Seinfeld fails to do that. Watching him go on for way too long about how annoying his wife can be and generalizing cliché thoughts about women just didn't hit my comedic tastes at all.

Luckily, the first half of the show was so incredibly good, that it still made this show very worth watching and an overall good experience for a glass-half-full viewer like myself. Seinfeld's observations about mundane things are exactly as hilarious and perfectly delivered as they were in the 90's, and it's great to hear him doing bits about more modern phenomena like social media and meaningless phrases. The first half of 23 Hours To Kill features hysterical and unforgettable jokes, not to mention the most epic entrance I've ever seen in the genre, but the second half was enough of a letdown to lower this show's placement on my list significantly.

8. Taylor Tomlinson: Quarter-Life Crisis (2020)

Taylor Tomlinson may be six years older than myself, but watching her stand-up special still felt like the welcome change of watching stand-up from someone roughly my age. Many defining issues of my generation are joked about throughout her routine, which makes for a lot of relatable and fresh humor. Tomlinson's effortless-seeming style of delivering jokes is also very much on point, and the ample pop culture references make the show all the more enjoyable.

Not going much into serious societal issues and not featuring any especially controversial humor, Tomlinson's comedy special is definitely one of the most chill and "safe" options on my list. She does have her share of sharp and strong opinions, but they're usually aimed at subjects like dating culture and 'fake introverts'. Perfect comfort viewing for millennials and zoomers looking for relatable humor, or perhaps an interesting way for older generations to try and understand modern youths a bit better, Quarter-Life Crisis is quite simply a lot of fun.

7. James Acaster: Represent

The second part of British comedian James Acaster's four-part collection Repertoire is even funnier than the very funny first one - I have yet to see the last two, but I'm very much looking forward to them based on the quality so far. Acaster's one-of-a-kind delivery of jokes and the way he builds them up with an endearing seriousness is quite refreshing and intriguing to follow - he presents many of his jokes as "true stories" that get more and more ridiculous as you slowly start to realize that this never happened but is just a build-up to an elaborate joke. My favorite bits from Represent would have to be the "celebrity gossip" with a twist in the beginning of the show, as well as the recurring joke about a juror who is really into log flumes.

6. Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby (2019)

While I'm a big fan of comedian Seth Meyers, I didn't have high expectations for this special - somehow it seemed to me that stand-up comedy wouldn't be his strong suite. I probably got that impression due to having seen him exclusively in very different kinds of comedy situations; between anchoring Saturday Night Live's (1975-present) Weekend Update segments and hosting his talk show Late Night With Seth Meyers (2014-present), I don't think I had ever seen him physically standing up, much less delivering the kind of comedy that goes with the genre. But boy, was I wrong with my low-bar expectations: it turns out that Mr. Meyers is a man of many talents.

The namesake of the show is the amusing story of how Seth's second child was born; I had already heard the story on his show, but here he delivers it in a much funnier manner. Later in the show, he jokes about politics, while offering Netflix viewers the option to "Skip politics" with a function similar to the "Skip intro" function on Netflix shows, which leads to some clever messing with the audience. The end of the show serves as a perfect antithesis to the outdated "I sure hate my wife" humor that I mentioned at this list's #9 placement: Meyers jokes about his marriage in an honest and heartfelt way, and to make absolutely sure that he wasn't giving an unfair image of his marriage, he then uses his acting chops to assume the role of his wife and joke about what an annoying husband Seth can be, as his wife. That makes for the most wholesome moment I've seen in any stand-up routine, proving that good comedy doesn't always have to be at the expense of others.

5. Trevor Noah: Afraid Of The Dark (2017)

Apart from being one of the best in the talk-show business as the host of The Daily Show (1996-present) from 2015 onward, South African comedian Trevor Noah is one hell of a stand-up performer. Perhaps his most staggering skill is impressions and accents, and that skill is on full display in Afraid Of The Dark. In a magnificent bit about Brexit and colonialism, he casually shows off English, Scottish, Indian and Russian accents, all of which have the perfect balance of accuracy and over-the-top humor, making them quite hilarious yet not offensive or too caricature-like. Later in the show, he does go into his famous Obama impression, but not in a conventional way: he creates a hilarious fictional scenario where Nelson Mandela supposedly taught Obama how to talk like a president, and enacts a conversation between the two, where Obama's voice begins as a high-pitched Chris Rock -type until Mandela manages to tone it down. Noah's work with voices is at its most impressive here, and that's saying quite a lot.

But it's not all about impressions and funny voices. The jokes and anecdotes themselves are very funny, if not quite as much so as in his other Netflix special (more on that later). Noah's smooth charisma makes him a likable performer, who manages to stay more clean and less offensive than most in the modern stand-up industry, even when he's joking about subjects like race relations or immigration - he always knows where to draw the line. If Dave Chappelle's act is too edgy for you, Noah's comedy features much less controversial but just as funny jokes on many of the same topics.

4. Jimmy Carr: The Best Of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits (2019)

This Jimmy Carr comedy special is ranked much higher on my list than the other one I've seen from him, but to be fair, it might be for the same reason that I liked Deadpool (2016) much better than Deadpool 2 (2018), even when they're just as good in most aspects: I saw The Best Of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits first, so it has all of the positive shock value as an advantage. The British comedian was totally unknown to me when my girlfriend showed this comedy special to me, so I didn't know what to expect, and that made the experience a lot more memorable. Never before had I seen a stand-up show with humor so borderline, edgy and disturbing - yet so funny and surprisingly unoffensive.

The comedy of Jimmy Carr is a strange in-between point of Dave Chappelle and Trevor Noah; it's always pushing it, a bit controversial and quite edgy, yet it never quite crosses the line. It's not completely politically correct like Noah's routine, but also not staggeringly incorrect like Chappelle's. Carr's show hit my sense of humor perfectly, as I'm a big fan of dark humor, but not of downright offensive comedy. In addition to the incredible writing skill of preparing a show full of jokes that walk that difficult line, Carr also gets points for the jokes being extremely funny. I also enjoyed watching his other special Funny Business (2016), but it didn't have nearly as much of an impact - but as I mentioned, it might be due to the order in which I watched them. Hard to say for sure. Just in case, I recommend watching either one for any fans of dark humor, and then watching the other one if you enjoyed!

3. John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid (2015)

Former Saturday Night Live writer John Mulaney is hands-down my favorite comedian. If I could see any stand-up comedian live, I wouldn't have to think for two seconds about who I'd choose. There's something about his sharply written jokes, his absolutely hilarious way of delivering them and his overall strange energy that always gets me - the guy looks and talks like a radio announcer from the 1930's, yet his comedy act is still filled with modern sensitivities, which makes for an odd but addicting combo.

In The Comeback Kid, Mulaney performs an awesome set at his hometown of Chicago, Illinois. The set includes a wholesome and funny take on his marriage, a hysterical rumination about what a weird movie Back To The Future (1985) is, and one hell of a final act with the story of the time he met Bill Clinton. The entire Clinton-bit is a perfect example of the stand-up comedy trope where many elements that have been built throughout the show all come together in a sort of climax, where one story gets better and better with a series of punchlines and callbacks to previous jokes throughout the show. There are so many hilarious twists to the Clinton story that it serves as a perfect ending to what is one of the greatest stand-up shows that Netflix has to offer.

2. Trevor Noah: The Son Of Patricia (2018)

Speaking of comedians tying together multiple jokes with a story that connects them all, The Son Of Patricia features better examples of that than any other comedy special I've seen. It happens for the first time less than halfway through the show, as Trevor Noah tells a long anecdote about his trip to Bali. The story gets better and better for a long time, as Noah tells it with comedic perfection, allowing many of the elements to resurface towards the end of the story. It all comes together beautifully. A similar thing happens at the end of the show, where Noah manages to tie together nearly all of the show's best bits and jokes with a hilarious bit about linguistic differences and racial slurs.

Racism as a topic is an obviously serious matter that often doesn't make for good comedy, but there's just something about how Noah tells about his South African heritage and the ways he has dealt with racists, always with a tongue-in-cheek feel while still not kidding about the issue's serious implications. I especially enjoy his story of taking his mother's advice while reacting to the first time he was greeted with a racial slur in America, in an anecdote that served as the namesake for this comedy special. Other parts of The Son Of Patricia delve into many different topics, with nearly all of it consisting of Noah telling true stories from his own life, but just doing it in an absolutely hilarious way - my favorite is probably the one about the time he met president Obama, and thoroughly embarrassed himself due to a misunderstanding. The stories themselves are quite amusing, but it's Noah's impeccable delivery that really make them into such comedic gold.

1. John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous At Radio City (2018)

The Trump presidency has been the favorite topic of American comedians for the last four years - but not a single comedic jab at the current commander-and-chief has been funnier than John Mulaney's allegory of a horse being loose in the hospital, found in this magnificent stand-up special. He never even mentions Trump by name during the bit, but his hilarious anecdotes of the loose horse go on for quite a while, tackling many Trump-related issues in absolutely hysterical fashion. The first time I saw that bit, I was more or less cry-laughing for much of its duration.

The rest of the special is just as good. Whether he's joking about the Catholic church and his own religious upbringing, his time as a writer for SNL, or about eccentric detective J.J. Bittenbinder's advice for children, he does it all with unique charisma and perfect delivery. The jokes are well-written and Mulaney's signature style of telling them is at its absolute best, making this the slightly better of the two stand-up specials by my favorite comedian that are currently on Netflix.


That's my list! On a more serious note, I strongly recommend watching the Netflix documentary 13th (2016) to all of my readers. With the current situation in America calling a lot of attention to understanding systematic racism, watching this powerful documentary can have a huge impact - as much as I have read about the problem, 13th opened my eyes to the full scope of the issue, which is a lot larger than most media makes it out to be. Obviously a lot more has to be done than just watching a movie, but since this is a movie blog, I figured I'd through the recommendation out there.

Thank you for reading! As the popular animated sitcom Rick And Morty recently finished airing its fourth season, next week's post will be a project I've been working on for quite some time: a ranking of all 41 Rick And Morty episodes. Fans of the series, be sure to check that one out!