American Comedy Lagging & Stew Lee's critical comments.

[Famous Mortimer]

Wouldn't touring America be a massive ballache compared to touring Britain? Can you imagine popping in a van and driving around the US? It's a non starter.

I'm not even saying you're wrong, I don't know. But just geographically I can see why it would be easier for UK comedians to move around and cover more smaller towns more easily.

Oh, definitely. But...domestic flights are much more of a thing here, so comedians travel that way more. And, from local observation, people who aren't quite good enough to make it in LA or New York stay where they are - we have fairly regular nights, all of which seem to be hosted by one of the same 4 people.

[up_the_hampipe]

Could be I was just unlucky, and to be fair I didn't do a lot of digging about, but in the UK I'd still manage to blunder into a show with a multimedia element, say, or some kind of over-arching narrative, or a 15-minute bit done as a character, or just something more than someone in a T-shirt or moderately nice blouse doing gags about jerks in traffic.

For better or worse (worse; it's worse), "someone at a mic doing jokes" is the expectation of US audiences, not helped by loads of shite Netflix specials that are exactly that.

Based on podcasts I've heard with US stand-ups talking endlessly about comedy, I think they dislike that alternative Edinburgh style. No powerpoint presentations, no props, no characters, just be funny. It's very dismissive, and there are some great examples of how messing with the form works, but also with a lot of Fringe style stuff, it does seem like a distraction. The themed discipline is particularly frustrating because a lot of good material can be sacrificed to try and cram in weaker material that fits with some "narrative".

I've generally had a better time seeing US stand-ups because their goal is to just give you the best material they've come up with in the past year or two.

[sevendaughters]

I have a friend who is a stand-up in provincial Canada, seems once a week to be on these bills that are like $20 in, often at a brewery or a wine-tasting, the comics seem fairly legit and diverse in style and demographics. He does Toronto about 2x a year and it always seems like a Big Deal.