Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda

Not funny in the slightest, not even a little bit. Boring, laboursome, recycled jokes... if you can call them that, which would be a definite stretch. The comedy is so basic and one dimensional, and they all have a very similar persona. They're duplicates of each other but just look different. It's painfully clear that they are all obsessed with themselves. It's exhausting

There's also a very obvious laugh track played throughout which means the live audience didn't find these people funny. It was so bad that it was akin to a train crash - you can't look away because it's just that terrible. I don't get how they wrote these jokes and genuinely thought that they were writing comedy... Now that's funny!

This comedy special consists of 8 stand-up routines from a diverse array of LGBTQ+ performers, from both the UK and the US. Most of them were excellent, though a couple fell a bit short with their material. But even those ones had strong deliveries that bode well for their future performances.

With 8 performers with a related background and a unifying theme I would have expected there would be more overlap in their content, but each one was surprisingly fresh. There's quite a bit of range in their approach to gender, with some laughing an their own personal experiences while others deftly made a mockery of social media and political attacks against the community.

I'm definitely looking forward to more content from these comedians.

I get it. We are in a progressive and (mostly) tolerant society. And I am happy that people are starting to feel more empowered and confident in who and what they choose to be.

However, that doesn't mean we should give Netflix a pass for pushing the most braindead, thoughtless, uninsightful and just downright awful "comedy" as a way to score themselves some of those precious, sweet, social brownie points.

This, much like everything else Hannah touches, is a putrid dumpster fire that didn't make me laugh, or even cause a slight smirk throughout the entire thing.

It's painful to watch when you know that the only thing these "comedians" have to offer is uninteresting and pretty obvious points of view surrounding LGBT and the society they exist in. I think the fact that these people make their sexual identity their ENTIRE personality should not qualify them for a comedy show. It's the most boring, self indulgent thing I've ever seen. And I've seen A LOT of bad comedy.

In essence, it's a vapid and shallow special where comedian after comedian just wants to pat themselves on the back for being so progressive and "leading the way".

Pandering at it's finest, and of course Netflix are the ones to push it.

Please don't take this as an assult on the LGBT community. It's not bigoted for me to tell you that these people are terrible at comedy and have no place being on our screens.

Honestly, i'm not surprised. I've been a fan of Hannah Gadsby's for quite a number of years, so her assembling a cast that she as a master of her craft thinks is worth giving a go... yeah, definitely worth my time.

Each comedian has about 10 minutes. Deliver that first joke/theme, expand on it, a couple of twists and sly asides, and then put a bow on it.

Each has distinctive style and much like going to any of my local comedy clubs, that is part of the joy. Is every performer and every joke going to land for me? No. But this show hit well through its tight 75 minutes.

For me the highlights, in addition to Gadsby, were DeAnne Smith, Chloe Petts, and Dahlia Belle.

As with any showcase introducing a number of comedians that were largely unknown, there were hits and misses. Overall, though, I enjoyed it. As others have pointed out, there appeared to be some enhancement of the audience reaction, which seems a bit odd. Perhaps the audience was not advised that it was a recorded performance, or perhaps the venue was not a great fit - you'd expect that loyal local fans of the comics on display would make every effort to attend and be naturally enthusiastic. At any rate, that didn't really impact my reaction to the show. Since this special prompted a batch of hate-downvoting (which seems to be more and more common these days) I looked at a few of those reviewers and found that all or nearly all of their reviews were 1/10. They must be really poor at selecting what movies/specials they decide to invest their time in watching if they continually sit through performances they hate.