One of the preeminent historians on comedy, Kliph Nestoroff, will kick off a journey down a rabbit hole of the craft of comedy for Viceland’s docu-series Funny How?.
Here’s a clip from the show of Kliph explaining the early days of Christian stand-up comedy, in case you needed a bit of a reference point for how deep his comedy history knowledge goes.
Catch the premiere of Funny How? at 11:30PM tonight on Viceland.
It’s an ever evolving mystery on exactly how comedy works and how comedians are able to synthesize their reality into something that will make a group of strangers laugh.
Many series, documentaries, podcasts, movies, books, etc. have explored this topic and will continue to do so as comedy keeps changing.
The latest series to dissect the inner workings of comedy will be coming from Viceland and led by esteemed comedy/entertainment historian Kliph Nestoroff.
Called Funny How?, Kliph will watch comedians try working out their material and then talk shop with them about their process.
Here’s a trailer for the docu-series, which you can catch the premiere of on July 10th.
If you’ve ever read or heard anything by author Kliph Nestoroff, you’d probably be dazzled by the amount of comedy history that you weren’t even aware of. Nestoroff has been meticulous in his research and study of comedy’s past and more often than not, he knows all the names, dates, and relevance of those Vaudeville performers, speakeasies, and other elements of comedy’s yesteryears.
All of this is packed into his brand new book The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy, which you should get for yourself and others. We have no doubt that you’ll probably wish that this book was part of some college course you took.