The showrunner of Call My Agent! is back with a winning series about France’s young comics and how their onstage routines and real lives intersect
Is there a gap in the market for an ensemble TV show about comedians’ lives? At least since Seinfeld, there has been no shortage of telly shows about standup, tangentially or otherwise, from Louie to Hacks, and from I’m Dying Up Here to the Netflix hit The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. And yet, Standing Up – also on Netflix – feels fresh to me: its characters are engaging, its insights into the standup life are sometimes schematic but faithful to the unglamorous yet folk-heroic reality. The twist – and maybe the source of its freshness – is that Standing Up (AKA Drôle) is from France, whose standup scene is younger and more distinctively diverse than its UK and US equivalents.
I wrote about this last year, quoting a joke by the Franco-Ivorian act Shirley Souagnon: “Do you know the difference between theatre and standup? The colour.” Standing Up – created by the showrunner of the terrific Call My Agent!, Fanny Herrero – focuses on the ups-and-downs of four standups, centring around titular comedy club Le Drôle. There’s French-Algerian Nezir, living in the banlieues with his disabled dad, struggling to make ends meet. There’s Aïssatou, who is Black, and on the threshold of stardom after a video goes viral, even as her intimate standup throws her personal relationships into disarray. Add into the mix washed-up Bling, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, who runs the club but whose standup career is in freefall, and rookie Apolline, concealing comedy ambitions from her well-heeled family, and you have enough narrative plates spinning to easily sustain this enjoyable six-part show.
