Hell yes, these comedy folks are funny, and coarse

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/02/2012 (5308 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a certain level of brash confidence implied when you call your comedy show Funny As Hell.

You’d better deliver the laughs, and it’d be a good idea if they arrived with some attitude and perhaps a modicum of coarseness.

Fortunately, the Canadian standup-comedy showcase that carries that title — which begins its second season Friday at 10 p.m. on HBO Canada — once again lives up to its swaggeringly confident moniker, providing a showcase for some of the edgiest and most inventive comics you’re likely to see on television.

Funny As Hell, which is hosted by filter-free Canadian comedian Jon Dore, maintains the same format it employed in its first season — a simple comedy-club set, flanked by a couple of swinging doors that offer the performers an anything-but-glamourous entrance and exit, a short, show-opening bit by Dore, and then three solid, 10-ish-minute sets by the featured acts.

The new season’s guest list is impressive, mixing a roster of familiar standup acts with sharp comic minds better known for their behind-the-scenes joke writing — led by Kristen Schaal (The Daily Show), Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords), John Mulaney (Saturday Night Live) and Greg Davies (The Inbetweeners).

Dore remains a perfect choice for this format, bringing both the attitude and the material required to set the tone for what follows. In Friday’s premiere, he opens with an Anne Frank joke that draws gasps and “oohs” from the crowd.

“No, no, no,” he protests. “I can tell that joke, because my grandfather avoided the Holocaust with his ability to hide … and by not being Jewish, and by living in Canada his entire life. It’s all about strategy….”

And away they go.

The season-kickoff episode, which was shot last year in Montreal during the Just For Laughs festival, features Hannibal Buress, a staff writer on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, touring comic and frequent TV-commercial performer Pete Holmes, and Friars Club “Roastmaster General” (and recent Winnipeg visitor) Jeffrey Ross.

Buress lends a philosophical air to the show, waxing eloquent about masturbation and pondering the esoteric reflections we engage in during times of crisis.

“Whenever people are going through struggles in life, they get really clichéd,” he says. “They say stuff like, ‘I’m taking it one day at a time.’ You know who else is? EVERYBODY, because that’s how time works.”

Holmes, in a very timely and funny segment, considers the clash between old information sources and new technology — like when the new telephone directories are delivered to his apartment block.

“It’s 2011. The phone book still exists,” he muses. “It’s looking up at me from the floor, like, ‘Here — we printed a portion of the Internet for you to throw away.'”

Holmes also wonders aloud just how smart “smart” phones really are: “Having Google on your phone is like having a drunk know-it-all in your pocket.”

Ross, who earns his living as an R-rated (and beyond) insult comic, serves up a funny set that’s mostly unprintable in a family newspaper. He does, however, take time right off the top to bite the Canadian hand that’s feeding him:

“This is crazy — HBO Canada,” he observes. “It doesn’t get any smaller than this.”

Well, maybe it ain’t much, but it’s all ours. And truth be told, it really can be kind of funny as, er, heck.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

TV Review

Funny As Hell

Hosted by Jon Dore

Friday at 10 p.m.

HBO Canada

3 1/2 stars out of 5