The week's comedy on demand

This week’s best comedy shows on demand.

Ill Behaviour

It’s a comedy about cancer! Although its makers insist it’s not, not really.

Peep Show creator Sam Bain has written this dark new comedy-drama about a guy called Charlie, who gets an early diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a disease that can usually be successfully treated with chemotherapy.

Vut when he shuns the scientific treatment in favour of unproven alternative methods, his friends hold him hostage and administer the chemo themselves, against his will, and with the aid of an alcoholic oncologist.

And like any good sitcom, the consequences of the kidnapping, however good-intentioned, become increasingly severe and apparently inescapable, and the friends become more monstrous as the treatment takes its physical toll on Simon.

Inbetweeners co-creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley are executive producers of the three hour-long episodes, which are streaming on iPlayer from today. Watch here.

Live At The BBC: Liam Williams

The sixth in this series of half-hour comedy specials is billed as ‘ marvellously morose comedy about the state of the planet’, and it’s hard to take issue with that appraisal. ‘I like to seem aloof,’ he says as he puts the audience on their back foot from the get-go. There's shades of Stewart Lee in the dour style, although his inherent misery is his own, especially when his attempt at altruism ends up coming at a cost to his health.

Watch here.

I, Daniel Blake

Not a comedy, but the breakthrough acting role for stand-up Dave Johns, is available now on Amazon Prime, free for subscribers

In Ken Loach’s award-winning film, Johns plays the title character, who is denied benefits despite his doctor finding him unfit to work before he gets embroiled in the soul-sappingly cruel and unforgiving bureaucracy of an uncaring welfare state.

Aditi Mittal

Talk about good timing. Aditi Mittal, one of the first women to do stand-up in India, is coming to the Edinburgh Fringe next month – just as her special is released on Netflix. The show, Things They Wouldn't Let Me Say, promises frank talk about being single, wearing thongs and the awkwardness of Indian movie ratings.

Watch here

Published: 22 Jul 2017