Stream It Or Skip It: 'James Acaster: Hecklers Welcome' on Max, the comedian and his inner child confront their insecurities (2024)

After releasing four specials at once on Netflix in 2018, and following it up with Cold Lasagne Hate Myself on Vimeo, James Acaster made his HBO debut with his post-pandemic show, coming out of lockdown to confront his insecurities about comedy, and as the title suggests, his insecurities about audience confrontations. Will he succeed? How would we know?

JAMES ACASTER: HECKLERS WELCOME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Nominated five consecutive years for Best Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2012-2016), Acaster also is a regular on British TV panel shows and co-hosts the popular Off Menu podcast with fellow comedian Ed Gamble.

For this hour-plus, Acaster explores his love/hate relationship with stand-up through a series of stories from his childhood that probe his origin stories as a comedian. But first, for this tour and special, he laid down some house rules. Four of them:

1. James Acaster cannot get annoyed at the audience if they; heckle, talk amongst themselves, go on their phones or are quieter than he would like
2. James Acaster may not single anybody out who has not heckled. Especially people who are; just getting up to go to the toilet, going outside for air, going to the bar, going home or any latecomers.
3. James Acaster doesn’t have to respond to a heckle if he doesn’t feel like it. But he may only kick someone out if they are violent or use hate speech.
4. Even though he’s spent his entire career trying to meticulously control every single detail in every single show he’s ever done, James Acaster has to accept whatever happens.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?:In recent years, the rise of crowd-work clips and specials may have prepared viewers a bit too much for comedians interacting with hecklers. And in the UK, Jimmy Carr has made it a point in his own shows to proactively deal with hecklers. But what Acaster ultimately is doing here is much less a Roast Battle than it is an exercise in mental health.

Memorable Jokes: Acaster describes the favorite gig he has ever seen, as well as one of his worst early gigs as a stand-up comedian, and you may be surprised to learn what those experiences have in common.

What they don’t have in common are mic issues, which seem to undermine Acaster much more in the room than they do for us as viewers in post-production. Although watching him have to swap out his microphone twice during the performance affords him additional opportunities to heckle himself. During the first exchange of his wireless mic for a wired one, Acaster quips: “Look, sometimes it’s more reassuring tp just f—it straight out the gate.”

For fans of the viral clip from Cold Lasgne Hate Myself, Acaster offers perhaps a more sincere take on the edgelords he mocked five years ago:

Here, Acaster recounts observing a comedian who lectured his audience about stand-up, claiming to them: “Comedy always comes from a place of love, OK? It never comes from a place of hate.” Acaster isn’t so sure. Moreover, he imagines that comedian’s audience falling down a manhole, one after the other, in a conga line procession, complaining about free speech all the way down. “I hope them and their entire fanbase dies soon,” he snarks.

As for the hecklers, there aren’t nearly as many as you might’ve expected considering the title and the house rules at the top of the special.

The first voice to shout out calls out Acaster’s looks based on his sweatsuit. Another voice about a half-hour into the proceedings tags one of his bits with “could’ve been worse,” but referring not to Acaster’s humor but the subject matter. Much later, a woman shouts out a phrase that served as a callback to one of Acaster’s first stories, prompting the comedian to reply: “Lovely to have a heckler in here who appreciates structure.” Another, whose heckle isn’t quite audible to us at home, makes Acaster laugh and inspires a copycat or two.

But many stories go largely uninterrupted, such as Acaster’s recollections of how and why his dad named the family dog after a former student of his, how Acaster’s ego was hurt during a Roald Dahl event where he and others read Dahl books to kids, and how he reacted observing an old balding man’s response to taunts from kids on the train.

Our Take: It turns out the conceit was as much deceit, as the idea of welcoming hecklers never turns into any confrontational one-upmanship that would lend themselves to TikToks, Reels or YouTube clips. And it never necessarily was Acaster’s goal.

Even if the opening sequences, showing him drumming, stretching and hitting a tetherball with a paddle in the square stage as the audience takes their seats on all sides of him, might lead you to believe he were preparing to battle them. As Acaster notes near the end of the performance, his crowds tend not to act any differently than if he hadn’t laid down the house rules at the top. Anyone who heckled probably would’ve interrupted his act anyhow. Most audience members behave themselves. So it’s not about us as audience members as it has always been about Acaster and how he’s trying to improve how he responds to strangers, whether on or offstage.

Which wasn’t his biggest revelation since the pandemic. “What I learned about myself during lockdown was I don’t like doing stand-up comedy,” he reveals.

While he might be like many stand-ups who tend to focus not on the happy, laughing patrons but on the lone face in the crowd that’s not cracking a smile, Acaster also acknowledges the irony that he rarely smiles or laughs in public himself, even when he’s really enjoying a fellow comedian’s performance.

And when he presents his therapist with stories he has shared with us about childhood experiences in large gatherings, he’s confronted with the possibility that “that’s why everything about you” in terms of why he became a comedian and why he’s attempting to deal with hecklers now that he’s a well-known personality. It’s all about his insecurities and fears that he has carried with him from childhood, his therapist suggests.

In this light, all of the interstitial cutaways might convey different meanings. His drumming providing his own variations on rim shots. The tetherball sessions, his way of letting out frustration while also symbolizing the notion that his battle is really with himself, and not us.

And perhaps in light of Hasan Minhaj’s past year (although never referenced explicitly), Acaster felt compelled to fact-check himself at the conclusion of his set, telling us how he merged two different stories into one, and fudging a little bit about his Cub Scout leader, but only because the truth in the latter story would’ve made him even more insecure.

Our Call: “All these stories feel very low stakes,” Acaster admits. That may be true, making this performance feel less impactful than his previous specials. For all of its clunkiness, though, the ideas at play here deserve more attention, particularly for comedians and comedy fans. For that alone, it’s a STREAM IT from me.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories:The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.