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Brick Wall Comedy

The Best of Ultimate Gold Greatest Hits

Jimmy Carr

Netflix · 2019 · 58 min

A fast-paced compilation of dark, offensive one-liners.

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Most stand-up specials rely on the element of surprise, but Jimmy Carr designed this hour around a different premise: treating a comedy set like a rock concert where the audience only wants to hear the hits. Collecting the most popular, and often most offensive, one-liners from his first 15 years of touring, the set functions as a rapid-fire anthology of dark gags, wordplay, and crowd interaction.\n\nFilmed at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin and directed by Brian Klein, the 2019 Netflix special captures Carr at a point in his career where his status as a British television fixture was firmly cemented. Rather than trying to weave a cohesive narrative, he leans into his signature formula of short, unrelated setups and sharp punchlines. The material moves so quickly that the crowd barely has time to react to one controversial joke before the next arrives, touching on weight gain, a panda, and other off-color topics. Along with the older material, Carr incorporates his usual crowd-work elements, chatting with audience members and reading out texts sent to him during the show.

The set list

4 bits

  1. Grocery spending in the West compared to third-world famine.

    Frames the statistic that Western weekly food budgets could feed the third world for a year as evidence that Westerners are being overcharged for groceries.

  2. Overheard conversation between two elderly women in a doctor's waiting room looking at a famine image.

    Highlights everyday brutality when one woman acknowledges the tragedy of famine and the other responds that at least they don't get their winters.

  3. Opening salvo comparing himself to burn victims to gauge the audience.

    Uses the harsh early joke as a litmus test, warning that if viewers found it 'a bit much,' it is going to be a long night.

  4. Dissecting how jokes function to a front-row audience member.

    Explains that a joke consists of two stories where an erroneous initial assumption is punctured by the sudden revelation of a concealed fact.

How it plays

Tone
Dark, edgy, taboo, witty, and unapologetically offensive.
On stage
Deadpan, middle-class, highly polished wordsmith armed with a fancy British accent, delivering dark, depraved, and taboo material with clever self-awareness.
Pace
Relentless, rapid-fire delivery described as 'all fastballs,' hitting a rate of roughly four jokes per minute.
About
Taboo topics (pedophilia, rape, famine), Dark humor and political incorrectness, Groceries and famine, The mechanics of joke construction

What the critics said

Praised by critics as a masterclass in rapid-fire joke writing, wordplay, and impeccable timing that continuously delivers whether the humor is silly, sublime, or sadistic.

In the room: Active and tested; Carr notes his favorite response is a sharp laugh followed by a sharp intake of breath, though some viewers remarked on disjointed editing and what felt like canned laughter.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: comedy.co.uk, chortle.co.uk, roku.com, swearmeter.com, decider.com, upi.com, the-independent.com, imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org.

Backstory

Filmed during his globe-spanning 'The Best Of, Ultimate, Gold, Greatest Hits' tour, Carr compiled the best one-liners from his 15-to-17-year career into a definitive greatest-hits set, coinciding with his hosting role on Netflix's panel show 'The Fix'.

Details

Released
Taped
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Runtime
58 min
Where
Netflix
Director
Brian Klein
Topics
Before
Funny Business (2016)
After
His Dark Material (2021)

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