Review of his new Netflix special

It’s official: comedy’s man of the moment Jamie Demetriou is funnier than Monty Python. Or at least his new Netflix special A Whole Lifetime edges out the Oxbridge gang’s similarly conceived Meaning Of Life film for sheer originality and surreal invention, even if both have their highs and lows

In this big budget one-off, we meet the comedian as an embryo being told by the omniscient voiceover what he can expect once he’s out of the womb. Cue a series of cradle-to-grave sketches set at each stage of life, plus a couple of wildcards – an insane Love Island parody called Kiss Villa and a spot-on takedown of vacuous Royal Wedding coverage.

We start with what could be a teenage version of his awkward but well-meaning property agent from Stath Lets Flats, lying in bed with his girlfriend (Ellie White) scrolling through their phones, repulsed by the very idea of sex as it’s just ‘so retro’. But despite their emotional distance, they do eventually succumb – for fear of being virgin-shamed on Twitter. ‘We’ve got to protect out socials…’

As with many of the best scenes here, it’s based on astute observation, and skilfully acted as to make the absurdly peculiar seem credible – before taking a turn into uniquely absurd territory involving ‘Turkish soap’.

A brilliantly repetitive sketch highlights the Groundhog Day banalities of office life while showcasing Demetriou’s fine slapstick talents, while an excellent stag party skit exposes performative laddishness for the horror-show it is. This cringeworthy scene is not the only one that feels like it’s going on too long, before Demetriou gives it an extra twist that breathes new life into it.

Similarly exposing crippling masculine insecurities is his socially maladroit dad, prone to odd invasive thoughts, while fretting about his parenting skills compared to the other middle-class couples in his orbit.

Demetriou’s work normally has an underlying optimism, so it’s something of a surprise that the scenes set in older life are bleaker. There’s the dull middle-aged man failing to break out of the stifling familiarity of a long marriage; the granddad being left behind by technology – though the strangest and most sinister of guardian angels comes to his ‘aid’ – and finally the man with the comically tiny body dying alone in a hospital that’s happy to chuck his corpse in the dumpster.

Yet even here there’s a glimmer of hope. The Luddite pensioner learns he’s missing nothing from living off-grid, and the whole show ends with an upbeat song-and-dance finale joyously celebrating the banal that probably had the budget of an entire BBC Three series.

In many ways, A Whole Lifetime is tonally all over the place, but it’s underpinned by a creative weirdness that feels like no one other than Demetriou could possibly have imagined. Plus there’s lots of singing.

Demetriou has also employed a strong cast of the finest performers from the alternative sketch comedy scene where he cut his teeth, including Katy Wix, Mark Silcox, Jonny Sweet, Jon Pointing, Phoebe Walsh and Kiell Smith-Bynoe.

Obviously fans of Stath Lets Flats will enjoy this – as will those in Netflix’s global audience unfamiliar with the goings-on inside Michael and Eagle but who loved the streamer’s other cult, offbeat sketch offering, I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson. And there’s so much going on in each insanely off-kilter skit it’d probably bear a second viewing, just to breathe in the oddness of it all.

Review date: 28 Feb 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett