Alt Comedy in the 1990s: The Decade That Built the Scene

American alt comedy in the 1990s was born out of a crash. The 1980s stand-up boom had filled the country with comedy clubs, and by the early '90s those clubs were full of comics doing the same observational bits in front of the same brick walls. A small group of performers in Los Angeles and New York stopped trying to fit in. They started their own shows in bars, coffee shops and music venues, read from notebooks, told stories that didn't resolve and made fun of the very idea of a “tight five”. By the end of the decade they had their own rooms, their own TV shows and a name: alternative comedy.

This is the first of our four-part decade series, followed by the 2000s, the 2010s and the 2020s. For a year-by-year view of the whole history, see the alt comedy timeline.

Where the word came from

“Alternative comedy” was a British term first. It described the generation of comics who came through London's Comedy Store and the Comic Strip from 1979, defining themselves against the racist and sexist humour of working men's clubs (our guide to British alt comedy tells that story). In the US the word was borrowed for something different: less political, more personal, and aimed squarely at the comedy-club formula. American alt comedy was a scene before it was a style, defined by where it happened and what it refused to do.

Los Angeles: Un-Cabaret, Largo and the coffee-shop circuit

Un-Cabaret

Beth Lapides launched Un-Cabaret in 1988, and from 1993 it ran on Sunday nights at LunaPark in West Hollywood. Lapides asked comics to leave their club acts at the door and talk about what was actually happening in their lives, often working from notes and trying material for the first time. It sounds simple; in 1993 it was radical. Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin and many more worked the room, and the confessional, unpolished style it encouraged spread across the scene.

Largo

Mark Flanagan took over a Fairfax Avenue cafe in 1992 and turned Largo into an intimate room for musicians and comedians. Patton Oswalt and Paul F. Tompkins became regulars, Tenacious D played there, and the club's mix of music and comedy, with no hard-sell club atmosphere, made it the other pillar of the LA scene. (It moved to the Coronet on La Cienega in 2008.)

The rest of the circuit

Patton Oswalt has credited Dana Gould with getting the LA alternative scene started in the early 1990s. Around those two rooms grew a network of small shows in coffee houses, bookstores and bars where comics like Andy Kindler, Laura Kightlinger, Kathy Griffin and later Maria Bamford could develop odd, personal material. The audiences were small and the money was minimal. The freedom was the point.

New York: Luna Lounge, UCB and the downtown scene

Eating It at the Luna Lounge

New York's scene came together a little later. The Luna Lounge opened on Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side in 1995, and on Monday nights its back room hosted Eating It, created by Marc Maron and Janeane Garofalo. Comics who worked it over the following decade included Sarah Silverman, Louis C.K., Todd Barry, Jim Norton and Ted Alexandro. The name was a joke about bombing, and the show encouraged comics to risk exactly that.

The Upright Citizens Brigade arrives

The Upright Citizens Brigade (Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh) formed in Chicago's improv scene in 1990, where Del Close and Charna Halpern's ImprovOlympic had been developing long-form improv since the early '80s. The group moved to New York in 1996, got a Comedy Central sketch series in 1998 and opened the UCB Theatre in Chelsea in 1999. That opening marks the hinge into the next decade: alt comedy in New York was about to get an institution, with classes, house teams and a pipeline into television.

The TV shows that defined the decade

The scene was small, but it got onto television surprisingly often, usually on shows that were cancelled quickly and remembered for decades.

The Ben Stiller Show (MTV in 1990, then Fox 1992–93). The Fox version lasted thirteen episodes and won an Emmy for writing after it was cancelled. Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Dick and Ben Stiller were in the cast, and the writing staff included Judd Apatow and David Cross. It's where Odenkirk and Cross met.
The Kids in the Hall (CBC, 1989–95, shown in the US on HBO and later Comedy Central). The Canadian troupe's character-driven, quietly subversive sketches were a huge influence on American alt sketch.
The State (MTV, 1993–95). An eleven-person troupe from NYU whose members (including David Wain, Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, Ken Marino and Kerri Kenney) went on to make Wet Hot American Summer, Reno 911! and Stella.
Space Ghost Coast to Coast (Cartoon Network, from 1994). Recycled 1960s animation and real celebrity guests in deliberately awkward interviews; the seed of Adult Swim.
Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (Comedy Central, 1995–99). Stand-ups, many from the alt scene, played the patients of a cartoon therapist voiced by Jonathan Katz, their sets reworked as therapy sessions.
Exit 57 (Comedy Central, 1995–96), the sketch show from Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, who later made Strangers with Candy (1999).
The Dana Carvey Show (ABC, 1996). Seven episodes of gleefully network-unfriendly sketch, with a writers' room including Robert Smigel and Louis C.K. and a cast including Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell.

Mainstream TV had alt-friendly corners too. Late Night with Conan O'Brien (from 1993) had one of the strangest writers' rooms in network history and booked alt comics early. HBO's The Larry Sanders Show (1992–98) satirised talk-show showbiz with an insider's cynicism, and featured Garofalo in a recurring role.

Mr. Show: the decade's masterpiece

Everything came together in Mr. Show with Bob and David, which ran on HBO from 1995 to 1998. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross had developed it in live shows in LA, and it carried the scene's values onto television: sketches that flowed into each other without blackouts, premises chased to their logical extremes, contempt for showbiz phoniness and a cast and writers' room full of scene regulars, including Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, Jack Black, Brian Posehn and Tom Kenny. It never had big ratings and HBO moved it around the schedule. It is now one of the most influential sketch shows ever made. Profiles of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk follow what they did next.

The people

The 1990s generation is the foundation of American alt comedy. Its central figures and what they brought:

Janeane Garofalo: the defining voice, sardonic and conversational, often working from notes. A cast member of The Ben Stiller Show and, briefly, Saturday Night Live (1994–95), and the scene's most visible face in films like Reality Bites.
David Cross and Bob Odenkirk: the sketch architects.
Patton Oswalt: the dense, reference-heavy writer-comic, and a writer for MADtv and Mr. Show.
Sarah Silverman: a briefly employed SNL writer (1993–94) who developed her faux-naive, shock-innocent persona in these rooms.
Marc Maron: the anxious, confrontational truth-teller, years before his podcast.
Paul F. Tompkins: the dapper storyteller, a Mr. Show cast member and Largo regular.
Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin, Dana Gould, Andy Kindler, Todd Barry and, by the end of the decade, Maria Bamford, whose character-switching style made her one of the most original comics of the next generation.

Meanwhile in Britain: alt comedy goes big

The British alternative wave of the 1980s grew up in the '90s. Vic Reeves's Big Night Out (Channel 4, 1990), with Bob Mortimer, turned variety-show nonsense into a cult. In December 1993, David Baddiel and Rob Newman played Wembley Arena, a moment that prompted the much-repeated line that comedy was “the new rock 'n' roll”. Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci's The Day Today (BBC Two, 1994) parodied news television with forensic precision. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring's Fist of Fun (BBC Two, 1995–96) carried the anarchic double-act spirit forward. The Edinburgh Fringe became the industry's main showcase. The two countries' scenes were mostly separate, but they shared a distrust of easy laughs.

How the decade ended

Mr. Show ended in December 1998. In 1999 the UCB Theatre opened in Chelsea, Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show, and Comedy Central's Comedy Central Presents half-hours (from 1998) were starting to give alt stand-ups national exposure. The scene's founders were moving into writers' rooms, films and network television, and a new generation was about to arrive through improv classes and, eventually, the internet. That story continues in alt comedy in the 2000s.

Frequently asked questions

What was alternative comedy in the 1990s?

In America, 1990s alternative comedy was a scene of comics who rejected the formulaic comedy-club stand-up of the 1980s boom. They performed in bars, coffee shops and music venues such as Un-Cabaret and Largo in Los Angeles and Luna Lounge in New York, favouring personal, conversational and experimental material.

Who were the main alt comedians of the 1990s?

Janeane Garofalo, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, Marc Maron, Paul F. Tompkins, Dana Gould, Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin, Todd Barry and Maria Bamford were all central to the American scene.

What was Janeane Garofalo known for in the 90s?

Garofalo was the defining performer of the American alt scene: a sardonic, conversational stand-up who often worked from notes. She was a cast member of The Ben Stiller Show and Saturday Night Live, appeared on The Larry Sanders Show, co-created the Eating It show at Luna Lounge with Marc Maron, and starred in films such as Reality Bites.

When was Mr. Show on the air?

Mr. Show with Bob and David ran on HBO from November 1995 to December 1998, across four seasons.