Excited For You To See And Hate This

Frankie Boyle kicks off his return to Glasgow with a greeting that sets the exact expectation of the title: “Hello you cunts, black power.” Filmed at the King’s Theatre, this 44-minute performance served as the live finale to his first major tour of Scotland in 12 years, a journey previously documented in his BBC travel series. But where the travelogue leaned into history and regional eccentricities, this set strips away any soft edges in favor of pure, pitch-black misanthropy.

Boyle’s focus rests heavily on the mechanics of his own medium. He offers a sharp, metacomedy critique of contemporary stand-up, most notably going after Ricky Gervais’s material on trans people. Rather than a defense of political correctness, Boyle’s angle is a structural one: he argues that Gervais is a superb writer who simply lacks the craft of a live comic, mocking the idea of Gervais “self-identifying” as a stand-up. This critique feeds into Boyle’s broader thesis that his own jokes are designed to build tension in the punchline rather than relieve it, illustrated by a quick gag about his uncle’s advice to “do what you love” ending in a heroin addiction.

The political targets are familiar, with Boris Johnson and Michael Gove bearing the brunt of it, but the delivery is deliberately hostile to mainstream television standards. Boyle pivots from national policy to the low-key absurdities of middle-aged decline, vitamins, and the existential dread of buying a dog, keeping the audience off-balance until the final, intentionally jarring punchline.