Like, Totally

Dylan Moran pacing a stage with a glass of wine and a cigarette is a familiar sight, but here he pairs his usual curmudgeonly grumbling with a strangely whimsical streak. Filmed at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, the show catches the Irish comic at a career high, turning lazy, everyday frustrations into surprisingly lyrical rants.

Moran spent the early 2000s cemented in the public consciousness as the miserable, wine-guzzling bookshop owner Bernard Black in the sitcom Black Books. Having wrapped up the show and appeared in the film Shaun of the Dead, he returned to full-time stand-up with a shambolic but tightly constructed style.

The material spans from the foolishness of city dwellers romanticizing country life, dismissing farmers as people who are merely ‘necessary to kill cows,’ to comparing Jesus to Batman as potential role models. Moran also riffs on the absolute lack of logic in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career, the sensory assault of the German language, and the compromises of long-term relationships. He even contemplates a bizarre, physical afterlife where he returns as nothing but a tentacle and a set of lips looking for chocolate.