‘Drew Michael’ On HBO Plays With Your Senses of Humor, Light and Sound

How can I prepare you for an hour of Drew Michael’s comedy without giving everything away?

Well. OK. Here, then, HBO has Michael himself and director Jerrod Carmichael how they came up with the concept for the comedian’s first hour special: Drew Michael.

So, yes, you see this isn’t your ordinary stand-up comedy special. It’s not even what you might think of as comedy, per se.

In this summer of debates over Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, Michael’s hour expands our collective conversation about what stand-up is and what it can be. Certainly, Michael evokes memories of HBO one-man shows past – such as John Leguizamo, or Eric Bogosian before that. Or even the monologue films of the late Spalding Gray.

Much of the hour finds Michael talking directly to camera, with no audience. The only other face or voice we see/hear is that of actress Suki Waterhouse.

Like most men in stand-up comedy, Michael dwells on his problems finding and nurturing a lasting relationship.

But Michael is not most men, nor most comedians.

So he takes his dwelling into the darkest of topics, and as directed by Carmichael, into literal darkness. We often only see his face and neck, and sometimes his hands if he raises them into the camera’s light.

He also plays with sounds, and with silence. The lack of an actual audience in the room forces us to sit with Michael and find our own interpretations, our own responses to his ideas, whether they’re funny or thought-provoking.

What other comedy special have you seen that just off-handedly offers a traditional baking recipe?

OK. So I have given something away, after all.

Whether his lines resonate with you or not, or if you happen to turn on HBO while he’s mid-thought and wonder what in the heck you’re even watching, Michael just hopes you’ll go along for the ride.

As he says at one point: “If you don’t like something just let it go and hit the people that it’s meant for. It’s not for everybody!?”

And isn’t that a central tenet of comedy we can all agree upon?

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Drew Michael on HBO NOW or HBO GO