The Funniest Stand-Up Specials of All Time

The  Funniest Stand-Up Specials of All Time

By Jason Bailey on Nov 18, 2013 12:01pm

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This Saturday night promises to be a big one for comedy geeks. First off, Comedy Central is airing Bill Cosby: Far From Finished, the legendary comedian and sitcom star’s first new comedy special in over 25 years. Meanwhile, over on HBO, Sarah Silverman is starring in her first special for the network, We Are Miracles. Though the two comedians couldn’t be more different, both specials feel like landmarks: innovative, intelligent, and brilliantly funny. To celebrate this big night for televised stand-up, we put together the definitive list of great comedy specials created for television, home video, or digital (theatrically released concert films, like Silverman’s Jesus Is Magic, Cosby’s Himself, and — sadly — most of Richard Pryor’s filmed work, don’t qualify). Here’s our 50 best, of all time, with a couple of extras to boot:

Honorable Mention #2 Bill Cosby: Far From Finished

Though Far From Finished is Cosby’s first recorded special since the mid 1980s, he hasn’t gotten rusty — he still tours all year, doing two-hour sets of laid-back, stream-of-consciousness storytelling, flexing a skill that he’s been honing for something like half a century now. The looseness of his live shows isn’t quite captured here (understandably, he went with tighter bits for posterity), but it’s still magnificently funny, focusing mostly on the evolution of relationships from dating through love, marriage, and parenting. Early on, he seems as amused as anyone that he’s doing a show for the hipper and much bluer Comedy Central, but in talking about it, he lays out his entire comic M.O.: “You aim at it, and you hit it. But nobody heard you firing!” (Interesting side note: the show is directed by Robert Townsend, who helmed the much dirtier — not to mention Cosby-bashing — Eddie Murphy: Raw.)

Honorable Mention #1 Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles

It’s feels too soon to place the new Cosby and Silverman specials in the stand-up canon, but they also shouldn’t be excluded solely due to freshness. Silverman re-teams with Liam Lynch, who directed her theatrically released stand-up/musical mash-up Jesus Is Magic, and shot her new act at the 39-seat small room at Los Angeles’ Largo (ridiculed for the size of the space in the prologue, she roars, “It’s called intimate, fuckface!”). In the hour that follows, Silverman forges new territory, quietly dropping — with only occasional exceptions — the oblivious, egocentric character of her earlier act and forging a relationship with her audience that is more honest and direct. It’s a smart and funny hour, 50. Kathy Griffin: Allegedly

Griffin doesn’t get much respect from anyone outside her diehard fans, but credit where due: her three-specials-a-year output puts even the notoriously prolific Louis C.K. to shame, and she’s developed a specific, distinctive voice in this celeb-obsessed age — as Movieline’s Louis Virtel adroitly noted, “she’s George Carlin as filtered through Louella Parsons.”