Comedians
Profiles of the performers who define alternative comedy, from the pioneers to the newest names.
What Is Alternative Comedy?
It began as a protest against racist club comics in 1979 London and became the name for any comedy that refuses the usual rules. Here is what “alt” actually means, where it came from and how to recognise it.
Cultural Comedy Differences
Slapstick crosses every border. Puns rarely survive customs. A practical guide to how humor changes from culture to culture, with real examples from Tokyo to Montreal.
Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees
Ninety-odd minutes on one subject, written like an essay and performed like a seduction. The story of Get On Your Knees, and of the writer-comedian behind it.
John Early: Search Party to Maddie's Secret
Elliott Goss, a rock-doc stand-up special, a fake reunion special with Kate Berlant and a camp melodrama he wrote, directed and starred in. A guide to the most theatrical comedian of his generation.
Andy Kaufman: The Full Story
He lip-synced a cartoon theme, read The Great Gatsby to paying crowds and wrestled women on network television. Forty years after his death, Andy Kaufman is still the reference point for every comedian who makes the audience wonder what's real.
Bo Burnham: Career Profile
A teenager's bedroom webcam, four specials, an acclaimed debut film and a lockdown masterpiece made alone in one room. The whole Bo Burnham story, in order.
Comedy and Mental Health
The idea that great comedians are secretly miserable is centuries old and mostly unexamined. Here is what researchers have actually measured, what comedians have said in their own words, and what the job itself does to people.
Jamie Loftus: Podcasts, Books, Comedy
Mensa, Nabokov, Cathy comics, Spiritualists, hot dogs and the internet's forgotten viral stars. How a stand-up built the most distinctive catalogue in comedy podcasting.
Comedy and Activism: Real Cases
Jokes rarely pass laws. Comedians sometimes do. A field guide to the campaigns, benefits and stunts where comedy stopped commenting on the world and tried to fix part of it.
Demetri Martin: Where to Start
A law-school dropout with a guitar, a harmonica and a big pad of paper. How Demetri Martin turned the one-liner into a multimedia act, and which special to watch first.
Hannah Gadsby: Career Profile
From a small town in north-west Tasmania to an Emmy, a Peabody and a public argument with the whole idea of stand-up. Every stage of Hannah Gadsby's career, in order.
Janeane Garofalo: Career Biography
Sketch TV, a defining Gen X film role, the rooms that invented American alternative comedy, then talk radio and protest. The full arc of a career that never stayed in one lane.
Lenny Bruce: Trials and Legacy
He was arrested for words, convicted for a nightclub act and pardoned 37 years after his death. Lenny Bruce turned stand-up from a string of gags into a man thinking out loud, and paid for it.
Maria Bamford: Career Profile
Your favourite comedian's favourite comedian, finally getting the documentary. Three decades of Maria Bamford, from Minneapolis open mics to Netflix, a bestselling memoir and Sundance.
Nathan Fielder: Career & Filmography
A business graduate from Vancouver who built a career out of awkward silences, absurd schemes and real people. The full story of Nathan Fielder’s work, project by project.
Top 10 Alt Comedians of 2026
Ten comedians doing the most interesting work in alternative comedy right now, ranked, with the reason for each pick and the best place to start.
UCB Theatre: A History
A sketch group from Chicago opened a basement theatre in Chelsea and accidentally built the main talent pipeline of 21st-century American comedy. Then it nearly vanished.
Anti-Comedy: The Definitive Guide
A lounge comic who hates you, a moth at the podiatrist, a man reading The Great Gatsby aloud until the audience leaves. Anti-comedy turns the failure of a joke into the joke.
Emerging Comedians of 2026
Award winners, festival breakouts and gloriously strange cult acts from the US, UK, Australia and beyond. Every name verified, every credit real.
Julio Torres: Career Profile
A Salvadoran writer who turned SNL's oddest sketches into a career of his own: two HBO series, an A24 film with Tilda Swinton and specials about shapes and colours.
Kristen Schaal: Career & Where to Start
Before she was Louise Belcher, Mabel Pines and the Guide, she was one of the strangest and most fearless stand-ups in 2000s New York. A guide to the whole career.
Megan Stalter: Career Profile
From nightly Instagram Lives in a pandemic to an Emmy nomination, a Netflix lead and Broadway. How a Chicago improviser became the face of loud, lovable cringe.
Patti Harrison: Career Profile
From a network debut that made fun of a military ban to a lead role at Sundance and a Twitter suspension for impersonating a cookie brand. Patti Harrison's career, in order.
Accessibility in Comedy
Comedy has a stairs problem, a captions problem and a booking problem. Here are the disabled comedians who have changed the conversation, and the practical fixes any venue or promoter can make.
Alexei Sayle: The Profile
A Marxist from Anfield in a suit two sizes too small, shouting at the audience above a Soho strip club in 1979. How Alexei Sayle set the tone for a revolution in British comedy, and what he did next.
Alt Comedy All-Stars: The Canon
Forty-odd names, six eras, one argument: these are the comedians who changed what a joke could be. Our all-time canon, with a top ten and a place to start for each.
Alt Comedy in the 1990s
The comedy-club boom collapsed, and a generation of comics went looking for somewhere else to be funny. What they built in LA and New York between 1988 and 1999 still defines American alt comedy.
Alt Comedy in the 2000s
The '90s rebels got jobs. The 2000s turned alt comedy into an infrastructure: improv schools, a late-night cartoon block, indie-rock record labels, YouTube and, right at the end, a microphone in Marc Maron's garage.
Atsuko Okatsuka: Profile & Specials
A comedian who turns a hard family story into joyful, deeply strange stand-up, and who got the internet dropping to the floor with her grandmother.
Aziz Ansari: Career & Specials
A business-school kid who came up in New York's improv scene, became Tom Haverford, reinvented the streaming sitcom, and remade his stand-up after 2018. The full arc.
Bo Burnham's Style Explained
A comedian who keeps catching himself performing, and makes that the act. How Burnham builds a song, a show and a joke about the joke, and which special to press play on first.
Bob Odenkirk: The Profile
Before he was Jimmy McGill, he wrote for SNL, built Mr. Show with David Cross and got Tim and Eric on television. Why Bob Odenkirk is one of the great behind-the-scenes figures in alt comedy.
Bowen Yang: SNL to Broadway
A chemistry graduate turned podcast host, SNL's first Chinese-American cast member, and a character comedian who makes inanimate objects sound like celebrities. A guide to Bowen Yang.
British Alt Comedy, 1979 to Now
It began as a political revolt against mother-in-law jokes in a Soho strip-club attic. Forty-plus years later it runs British TV, Edinburgh in August and half of Netflix's comedy imports.
Catherine Cohen: Cabaret Comedy
Sequins, belted ballads and devastating asides about wanting to be loved. A guide to Catherine Cohen, from Joe's Pub to an Off-Broadway musical about her own stroke.
Comedy and Inclusivity
The history of comedy is partly a history of who was allowed on the bill. How the line-ups widened, what actually changed it, and what promoters can do in their own rooms.
David Cross: The Profile
Half of Mr. Show, the man inside Tobias Fünke's cutoffs, and a stand-up who has been furious about the same things, brilliantly, for thirty years.
Donald Glover: The Profile
Sketch kid, sitcom writer, stand-up, sitcom star, rapper, auteur. Donald Glover's career makes more sense when you see it as one long comedy apprenticeship that never really ended.
Eugene Mirman: Where to Start
He has a degree in comedy, voices the loudest Belcher, and spent a decade running a Brooklyn festival that doubled as a joke. A guide to one of New York alt comedy's great organisers.
Flight of the Conchords: The Guide
Two flatmates from Wellington, two acoustic guitars and a commitment to never winking at the audience. How Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie made musical comedy cool again.
Garofalo's Style and Influence
She brought a notebook on stage, refused to fake confidence and treated the audience like friends at a bar. Here's how that style works, who picked it up, and the best way into her work.
Hannah Gadsby's Style Explained
A joke is a question with a trapdoor. Gadsby's trick is to show you the trapdoor, then decide not to use it. How their sets are built, what they keep coming back to, and which special to watch first.
Hannibal Buress: The Profile
A few minutes of a 2014 Philadelphia set reignited the allegations against Bill Cosby. But Buress was a brilliant, unhurried stand-up long before that night, and the bit makes more sense once you know his style.
Jaboukie Young-White
A stand-up from outside Chicago who went viral as a teenager, impersonated news outlets on Twitter, joined The Daily Show at 23 and then reinvented himself as an actor and musician.
James Acaster: Style & Where to Start
A former drummer from Kettering who builds stand-up like a puzzle box, then smashed the box open with the most personal show of his career. A guide to his specials, podcasts and books.
James Veitch: Career Overview
A British comedian who became famous for wasting scammers' time, on stage, with slides. What his act was, why it went viral, and what happened in 2020.
Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel & After
Four HBO specials, a network sitcom, a Sundance film and a reality series that made people wince. How Carmichael turned his own life into the material, and what happened after Rothaniel.
John Mulaney
He came up in New York's alternative rooms and became the most polished storyteller of his generation. A guide to his style, his specials and the odd, ambitious projects in between.
Julio Torres's Surrealism Explained
A crystal with ambitions, a font that ruins a man's life, a visa application as an epic quest. How Torres builds a surreal bit, why it lands, and what to watch first.
Kate Berlant: Profile & Where to Start
Performance-studies graduate, Taskmaster champion, Bo Burnham collaborator and one third of a famously close comedy friendship. A guide to Kate Berlant's work.
Mae Martin: Profile & Where to Start
A Canadian comedian who started at thirteen, made addiction and love into one of the best TV comedies of its era, and then pivoted to a thriller.
Marc Maron: The Profile
A frustrated 1990s club comic, a cancelled radio host, then the inventor of the comedy interview podcast as we know it. WTF ended in 2025. Here's the whole story, and why the stand-up kept getting better.
Maria Bamford's Style Explained
One woman, a microphone and about thirty people who live in her head, including her mother. How Bamford builds a bit, what she keeps returning to, and which special to watch first.
Martin Urbano
A Texas-born stand-up who built an entire hour around a fake cancellation, and earned an Edinburgh Best Newcomer nomination for it.
Megan Stalter's Style Explained
Big voice, bigger confidence, everything going wrong. How Stalter builds a character who is failing in public and still somehow winning, and what to watch first.
Patti Harrison's Style Explained
Calm face, alarming sentence, no flinch. How Harrison turns politeness into a weapon, why she never breaks, and the order to watch her best work.
Patton Oswalt
The nerd who took alt stand-up into rock clubs, then made some of the most honest specials about grief ever filmed. A guide to how he works and where to start.
Paul F. Tompkins
A Mr. Show alumnus in a three-piece suit who became podcasting's greatest character improviser. Where to start with PFT, and why he's so hard to keep up with.
Quiz: Your Alt-Comedy Archetype
Nine questions about what makes you laugh, and what you would do with a microphone. Find your comedic type, then meet the real comedians who share it.
Reggie Watts
A looping pedal, a voice that can do anything, and no script at all. Why Reggie Watts is one of alt comedy's true originals, and where to start watching.
Sarah Sherman (Sarah Squirm)
Gross-out surrealism from the Chicago DIY scene, carried all the way to Studio 8H. A guide to Sarah Sherman's comedy and where to watch it.
Sarah Silverman: The Profile
She built a persona that said appalling things with a sweet smile, then spent the next twenty years taking it apart in public. A guide to one of the most recognisable voices in American comedy.
Showrunners With Alt Comedy Roots
Some of the most distinctive TV comedies of the last thirty years were made by people who learned their craft in tiny rooms for tiny crowds. Who they are, where they started, and what the rooms taught them.
Stewart Lee: Style & Where to Start
He tells you which bits aren't working, which parts of the room don't get it, and then does the joke again. Why Stewart Lee's deconstructed stand-up is the central British alt comedy act of the century.
The Father of Alt Comedy
The title is contested, and that's the honest answer. But some claims are much stronger than others. Here is the case for each candidate, from 1950s nightclubs to a Soho strip-club attic.
Tig Notaro: The Profile
Days after a cancer diagnosis, a deadpan comic walked onto the Largo stage and told the truth. The recording became a landmark. What came before it, and the inventive career that followed.
Tim Heidecker
Half of Tim and Eric, sole architect of the On Cinema universe, and a sincere singer-songwriter on the side. A guide to the comedian who never breaks.
Top 10 of 2024, Revisited
In January 2024 we named ten comedians to watch. One went on to win a Tony, one got The Daily Show, and one should never have been on the list. Here's how the picks held up.
Why Comedy Partners Work
From Nichols and May to Tim and Eric, much of the best comedy has two or more authors. What great duos, troupes and writing teams have in common, and how to collaborate without falling out.
World Alt Comedy Scenes
Manzai battles in Osaka, English-language open mics in Berlin, crosstalk in Beijing and Instagram skits in Lagos. Where to look for interesting comedy when you leave London and New York behind.
Zach Galifianakis
Before The Hangover, he was the alt-room comic at the piano who let jokes die on purpose. The stand-up, the anti-talk-show and the strange, tender sitcom, in one guide.
Ziwe: Baited, Showtime & Black Friend
One deceptively simple question (how many Black friends do you have?) launched a career. How Ziwe's interviews work, and whether they count as journalism.