Sordid, ugly and threadbare: Jimmy Carr – Natural Born Killer reviewed

Here’s an offensive joke: ‘Jimmy Carr gets paid to do a Netflix special.’ All right, it’s not original – I nicked it from an online chat forum. And it’s not especially funny. But unlike any of the sordid, ugly, threadbare material in Carr’s excruciating set, it does at least contain a measure of critical insight.

Carr vauntingly lists all the ‘did he really go there?’ topics he plans to cover: ‘child abuse, domestic violence, abortion, murder, gun control and trans issues’. But his treatment of these subjects doesn’t feel refreshingly transgressive so much as gratuitously unpleasant. Here’s a sample: ‘Climate change is like my niece. It’s getting hotter every year.’ Then, having milked the first bout of uncomfortable titters, he adds: ‘It’s not as bad as you think. She’ll be six next month.’

His live audience, you sense, feel slightly embarrassed. Their laughter sounds the forced sort you put on desperately to reassure yourself that this expensive evening out you paid for wasn’t a total waste of money. Even Carr looks ill at ease. As well as swearing a lot more than he used to, his eyes dart from side to side (like the ‘Awkward Look Monkey’ in the popular meme), and he laughs rather too often at his own horrible, sordid jokes. Where once he resembled a wittily deadpan undertaker, he’s now starting to look as pale, drawn and sinister as the contents of the coffin.

If this sounds cruel or unfair, consider for a moment those braver, funnier, much poorer comics – unapologetically Christian comedian Alistair Williams, say – who’ll never get a lucrative Netflix special because they won’t sell their souls to the establishment. There is nothing edgy or outspoken or ‘stick it to The Man’ about having a go – as Carr does – at ‘anti-vaxxers’.