James Acaster: Repertoire

According to a comic friend of mine. James Acaster is known as the comedian that comedians would pay to watch. His "Repertoire" series on Neflix is akin to performance art. It is intricately yet seamlessly crafted. It follows to say that the devil is in the detail, and that Mr Acaster beguiles and bedazzles Lucifer into submission. Comedy is subjective, so all are welcome to disagree. However as a wise man... or woman once said "shut up! My opinion is well better than yours!"

My favourite comedian of the moment! Finding the funny in the most mundane of things and bringing a unique angle to the current comedy circuit.

Acaster is timeless, original, out there and the king of bringing older jokes back in without anticipation.

Refreshing and clever!

Well I just finished all the episodes and they weave together masterfully. Each episode i thought he is working his way up my list of favorite comedians with Bill Burr, Pete Holmes, Brian Regan, and Andy Woodhul. By the final episode and seeing that he just did a 4-5 hour comedy special the all wove together... fantastic. So damn funny.

I mostly knew James Acaster from some panel shows he went on. I then remembered seeing that he had a comedy special on netflix, and decided to watch it. First of all, I was agreeably surprised by the fact that it was a series of 4 stand up shows, I had never seen that before.

And watching it, every joke, every situation being randomly delivered until, at the very end of every episode he brings it all together like a puzzle of a rainbow he'd been designing this all time... I was amazed. In the end, he was hilarious, dramatic and he is a genie in comedic composition, if that's ever a thing.

The scope of these specials is defiantly something to be amazed by. The first three shows are loosely connected, with the final show, Recap, linking them all. It's an interesting idea and allows for intricate call backs and helps create some jokes that wouldn't have been possible either.

Each special stands up on it's own (however Recap will be less impactful if you've not seen the previous) and within it, there are plenty of absurd observations and enactments. The only stipulation is that if you're a fan of James Acaster you may have heard quite a few of these segments on various panel shows. There's still a ton of stuff you won't have seen and lots of the stuff you would have heard is more confidently delivered here, but that is something to consider.

As an aside, a common topic with US vs UK comedy is that US comedy is just jokes where as UK comedy tries to also have a narrative, which leads to US comedy being much more joke and laugh oriented, but perhaps not as personal. UK comedy has more of an arc so feels more like a 'complete' piece of standup (rather than a series of funny 'bits') and this seems like the perfect example of this. It's all connected but only uses that to elevate the comedy. Well worth a watch.