‘Comedians of the World’ On Netflix: Which Of These 47 Stand-Up Sets Are Worth Your Time?

By Sean L. McCarthy @thecomicscomic
Published Jan. 2, 2019, 4:00 p.m. ET

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COMEDIANS Of The World

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For decades, we let the argument that Jerry Lewis was big in France make a much broader statement about the French sense of humor.

The truth is much simpler.

Slapstick needs no subtitles.

Netflix kicked off 2019 by simultaneously unleashing 47 half-hours of stand-up comedy from around the globe as part of a collection they entitle Comedians of the World. The collections are organized in threes and fours by nation or region, with the United States up first, followed by English-speaking Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, India, then the subtitled-countries: Mexico, Germany, Brazil, France, the Middle East, French-speaking Canada, and the Netherlands.

Netflix didn’t provide subtitles for most of the screeners sent in advance, which resulted in many of the international comedians’ jokes getting lost without translation.

The flying-about-stage Dutchman, Martijn Koning, spends quite a bit of time focusing on his bald spot, and his inquiries into covering it up. That kind of physicality becomes enhanced by the subtitles, as does another routine in which he moves to Amsterdam and tries mushrooms for the first time; or later, downhill skiing. No wonder his set’s titled Martijn Koning: Unique Like Everyone Else.

At the other end of the spectrum, Adi Khalefa’s cadence echoes that of any American stand-up. Only Khalefa’s Palestinian, speaking in Arabic. You can hail from anywhere and snuff out the notion that he may get misidentified as Egyptian-born Liverpool soccer star Mo Saleh. Add the subtitles, and now you also understand all of the individual jokes Khalefa makes about it, or about his own miscommunications with his landlady in Montreal (where he and most of the others filmed these performances for Netflix and Just For Laughs), as well as an act-out of play-by-play soccer commentators if they weren’t all overly enthusiastic. Khalefa’s I Wasn’t Kidding even includes callbacks.

I say this because, for most of the countries where English remains a second language, the comedy scenes exhibit a, dare I say, naïveté, or unsophistication. If they were Americans, we’d call them hacks. But the truth is, in those countries, they’re relatively inexperienced in even hearing stand-up comedians talk about their lives and cultures. For them, all topics are fresh and ripe for observational punchlines.

Since you’re here reading this, I presume you don’t want to waste your time with average or merely acceptable comedy. So which comedians of the world are worth your time?

Why not start with Canada? You claimed you were going to move there if Trump won, didn’t you?

CANADA

DeAnne Smith: Gentleman Elf.
Smith, introducing Andy Kindler’s State of the Industry address last summer in Montreal, described herself thusly: “I’m the inside of a Hannah Gadsby babushka doll. It’s Hannah Gadsby, then Cameron Esposito, then Moshe Kasher, then me.” That’s not all you need to know to love Smith, but it’s a good start. Her set includes plenty of acknowledgements about the art of comedy, as well as her befuddlement at escape rooms, and astonishment upon receiving her bikini wax.

Dave Merheje: Beautifully Manic.
Merheje sounds like Dov Davidoff rubbed off on him, which isn’t a bad thing. Merheje works around New York City now, but he’s Lebanese, and his family moved to Windsor, Ontario, when he was a young boy.

K. Trevor Wilson: Talking Shit.
You may have seen Wilson on Comedy Central’s Roast Battle, but here, he has toned down the lumberjack look quite a bit. He’ll still be happy if he wears the same shirt all day, though, and has some strong opinions for people who treat their dogs as if they were children.

UNITED KINGDOM

Nish Kumar: Very Clever Boy.
At one point, Kumar, heard on the BBC on the regular, describes himself as: “Smart. Egotistical. Keen to a fault.” At another, he goes so far as to call himself “unbearably delightful.” There’s no doubt about the former; as to the latter, that’ll depend largely upon how much you remember the board game Monopoly and how much you hate Coldplay. In between, you’ll hear what it’s like to attend concerts solo by the late greats James Brown, David Bowie and Prince. All delivered in a tone reminiscent of an amped-up John Oliver.

SOUTH AFRICA

Loyiso Gola: The African African.
Gola has hosted his own late-night satirical talk show in South Africa, and recorded a stand-up special in New York City in 2016 for Vimeo Originals. He addresses the Canadian audience directly, and North Americans in general, right from the get-go, letting them know he has no intention of staying as a refugee or immigrant. “That’s like asking a whale to move to Japan for a singing career. It’s horrible!” Gola impersonates the late Nelson Mandela imagining a march in South Africa for animals or the environment, instead of civil rights. And he’s one of multiple comedians in this Netflix collection to remark upon how Black Panther tried but failed spectacularly at adopting actual Xhosa language. But Gola also sets his sights upon first-world complaints about things that aren’t even things in the rest of the world.

Loyiso Madinga: Long Way From My Village.
Madinga is so short — how short is he?! — he mocks himself as one of “the descendants of the ones who didn’t make the boat.” He’s the first international correspondent for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, localizing Comedy Central’s content for TV viewers back in South Africa. So he has jokes about trying to assimilate in New York City, and encountering Jehovah’s Witnesses up close and personal. His take on Black Panther‘s Xhosa flub is more sympathetic, because as he reveals, he’s as ignorant of Nigerian movies as we are.

INDIA

Aditi Mittal: Girl Meets Mic.
Mittal filmed an hour for Netflix in 2017 (Things They Wouldn’t Let Me Say), so she’s already ahead of the game compared to her compatriots. Whereas other Indian comedians on Netflix and elsewhere speak mainly in Hinglish, Mittal keeps the Hindi slang to a minimum, or only when the context supports it. She claims critics got on her case for joking before about boobs and bras, so she comes right out with some solid poop jokes, or not so solid, so to speak. For better or worse, the situation for women in comedy isn’t any better in India than it is here, as she wonders why every interviewer asks her why women aren’t funny. “This, begging for validation from strangers and having a low self-esteem, which is essentially what stand-up comedy is, is considered very charming when a guy does it,” she says. “But when a woman does the exact same thing you go, that’s so desperate!” Because only attention women are supposed to want is from men, and sexual. The more a woman talks, the less a man want to fuck her…And men don’t know what to do with the women they don’t want to fuck.” Yeah. Her too.

U.S.A.

And what of the Americans, pray tell? What do these selections say about us, what message does this send to the world about American comedy in 2018? As part of DeAnne Smith’s closing bit, she advised: “And if you didn’t connect with my style of comedy, just know that there are other styles of comedy out there for you. So many other styles. You might enjoy men loudly knowing things.”

That’s a gross oversimplification of American stand-up, too.

Although also all-too-terribly true.

At his best, such as 3 Mics, Neal Brennan is revelatory. At his worst, Brennan comes off as both a mansplainer and a whitesplainer. In Neal Brennan: Here We Go, he wonders why Germans don’t have Hitler statues, tells us the only appropriate compliment to give a woman, and advises women to never go to a man’s hotel room for any reason. I’d suggest you just go back and watch 3 Mics again.

Nicole Byer hosts the Netflix series Nailed It! In her own half-hour, Nicole Byer: Aggressively Adorable she wants to expose the “huge double standard in comedy talking about weight. A fat male comic can get onstage, assert himself and say, ‘Huh! I haven’t seen my dick in a year!’ Nobody feels bad for him. Everyone goes ‘Teehee’. That’s funny cause he’s fat! But the minute I get onstage and assert myself and say I haven’t seen my pussy in a year, everybody feels bad. Everybody goes ‘OH NO. Oh No.’ ‘Well, I guess she’s just been putting her hands in the folds?'” On the plus side, we learn about Byer’s time working at a Lane Bryant in New Jersey, participating in an episode of The Steve Harvey Show, and a crap-filled experience on a first-class flight.

Chris D’Elia: Nonstop.
D’Elia has multiple hour specials out, and here, he seems satisfied enough to just riff with the crowd and complain about a trip to Australia. It’s not a TED Talk, that’s for certain.

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Which leaves us with Nick Swardson: Too Many Smells. Swardson was a stand-up star in the 2000s who became not only a funny fixture on Comedy Central’s Reno 911, but also within the Adam Sandler movie universe. Swardson laments about blowing up physically in recent years: “Check out my new neck! I don’t want it. There’s no machine at the gym for this…It looks like I’m wearing an airplane pillow backwards.” But he’s still a 14-year-old inside that 42-year-old body, with a fear of magicians to go along with it. If you put down whatever you’re eating, you may be (may be) prepared for his stories about bodily fluids that still come out of him, whether he’s ready for them or not.

At that point, you may just wonder what the rest of the world is laughing about. Thankfully, Netflix has it all covered.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Comedians Of The World on Netflix