Stewart Lee's life is now mostly driving around and looking after kids so his frame of cultural references has dramatically shrunk and at the same time his ability to compete with the more modern stand-up style of the Mock the Week regulars and the like, with their stadium shows and sound-bite gags. Of course it is made even harder for him when a third of the Sheffield audience have clearly never seen him before but heard good things and were perhaps not prepared for his rather unique style of delivery.
I like Stewart Lee and recently I watched the 41st Best Stand-Up show and enjoyed it a lot and soon after got this one. The approach is the same in Carpet Remnant World because Lee gives a comedy show while also pushing against the norms of the stand-up circuit whether it be the delivery and jokes of the big names who pack stadiums, or the audience who struggle unless (in his perception) they are given what they are used to and don't have to do anything themselves. Previously he has walked that lined really well and there are times in this show where he gets it right – pushing back against his craft and his audience but not so much that he pushes away, just challenges. However in this show I think he does it too often, for too long and with almost too much effort to attack. It isn't helped by the feeling that the show is too long – and it does feel it.
This sort of hurts the material more than it should because he is joking that the audience isn't with him and that the material isn't working at the same time as the audience are unsure and some of the material is falling flat. Despite this this, Lee himself is still funny even if some of his morbid moments make him seem like Jack Dee more than he would like I'd guess. Lee's greatest skill is to deliver a great comedy show while also deconstructing it, you and the craft while you enjoy it – here he does a bit too much of the latter and is weaker than normal on the former – although I'd still watch this again and again over the generic big Christmas DVD's from "proper" stand-ups selling out Wembley Arena.
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