The best comedy on demand

This week’s best comedy shows on demand.

The Mental Podcast

Ray Peacock’s latest podcast has a more serious intent than his others such as the ghostly ParaPod… which, let’s face it, isn’t difficult. Released under his real name of Ian Boldsworth, the comic describes this series,  as ‘a collage of discussions about mental health and mental well-being that I’ve tried to make into a coherent series’.  He adds: ‘ I’m sure it’s educational on some levels, am sure it’s potentially helpful on some levels, am sure it has moments of clarity and moments of confusion, its occasionally funny, it’s occasionally sad, but overall, it is a group of very different guests giving their take on a group of different topics, glued together by my own contributions.’ All six episodes in the first series have just been released in one batch, and you can hear them all on iTunes  here. Boldsworth has written a lot more about the project here

Little Banks on Wall Street

This is fun: A new five-part web comedy in which Deion Banks, a Christmas Tree salesman decides to improve his lacklustre life after reading The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s from Carmen Christopher, who’s a regular Upright Citizens' Brigade performer in the States.

The Earliest Show

It’s been more than two years since Channel 4 announced Julia Davis was working on a new sitcom about a daytime TV host. While we wait for that to come to fruition – expected sometime in 2017 – US website Funny Or Die has taken the same idea for its web comedy  The Earliest Show. It stars Ben Schwartz from Parks and Recreation as presenter Josh, who, attempts to propose to his girlfriend on live TV, only to be rejected. The series follows Josh through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance

Detectorists

Want some heartwarming comedy for Christmas? The second series of Mackenzie Crook’s Detectorists has just gone up on Netflix (And a hat-tip to @NewOnNetflixUK for the alert). Subscribers can watch here

Published: 10 Dec 2016