Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Yearly Departed’ On Amazon Prime Video, Funny Women Eulogizing 2020’s Cultural Losses

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Rachel Brosnahan leaves 1960 behind and arrives at present day to executive produce a comedy special written and delivered by women to deliver the final words on 2020, in the form of a funeral service. Yearly Departed arrives on Amazon Prime Video. Whether you’re ready to cry or laugh about it, that’s up to you, but these funny women are going to deliver final toasts to several of the things that went from hot to not this year.

YEARLY DEPARTED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Phoebe Robinson presides over this wake for 2020 at Rob & Sons Funeral Home (Robinson’s, get it?), introducing seven women to present eulogies to specific aspects of pop culture that met their match and eternal grave this year.
Brosnahan said goodbye to pants, while Tiffany Haddish bid adieu to casual sex, Natasha Rothwell lamented the downfall of the fantasy portrayed by generations of TV cops, Patti Harrison gave epic shade to the grave to rich girl influencers on Instagram, Natasha Leggero shed tears on behalf of all mothers who became teachers during lockdown, Ziwe wrapped a bow on corporate pandering in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, and Sarah Silverman stuck one final fork in MAGA.
Stand-up comedy fans should already be familiar with Haddish, Leggero and Silverman, while fans of Shrill or Insecure have seen what Harrison and Rothwell can do in supporting roles. And Ziwe broke through social media in a big way this summer, with her Instagram Live interviews putting her famous and infamous guests to such shame that Showtime gave Ziwe her own show for 2021.
Robinson did have some optimism to share, too, though, declaring: “but I’m here today to also remind you that 2020 gave us so much! Banana bread, insomnia, and a sixth sense to know when someone is standing six feet away from you.”
Although it’s an all-female all-star lineup, backed by a women’s writers room, there are a couple of male cameos (comedian Rick Overton plays a funeral home worker, while Sterling K. Brown, who co-starred with Brosnahan in Maisel, lays himself down for the ladies to visually demonstrate the six-foot social-distance guidance).

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Takes the whole Death to 2020 a bit more literally than the Netflix special that also came out in this final week of the year, and that’s for the better.
Memorable Jokes: Patti Harrison nearly steals the entire show, what with her magnificently stunning variety of reaction shots, as well as her slideshow that accompanied her dressing-down eulogy for “Rich Girl Instagram Influencers.” Sample zinger from Harrison: “But what is tragically certain is that there was still so much left on Earth for them to not learn.”
Ziwe, the other performer who you might not have been as familiar with before now, also takes the most advantage of her camera time. Her topic: Beige Band-Aids. “Isn’t it nice? We asked for equality and we got a brown Band-Aid? A little brown Band-Aid on a systemic bullet hole.” She also lays into the performative b.s. by corporations to seem reliably woke.
Our Take: It’s all quite cathartic, to be certain. But is it laugh-out-loud funny?
Brosnahan ends her speech with a flourish, although her whole performance lands with decidedly less impact than you might expect for an actress who has won multiple awards for portraying a stand-up comedian, delivering another monologue.
Then again, perhaps I’m being too hard on all of the performers, especially since they weren’t exactly performing to a live audience outside of cast and crew. And funerals rarely elicit guttural guffaws unless you can really connect emotionally with the deceased and with the eulogist. So when you’re trying to poke fun at police brutality, or prolonged quarantines, or systemic racism, hell, you gotta bring hot fire if you really want to roast your targets.
Haddish, of course, had no problems maintaining her sense of humor and tone in this environment, railing about how even a “f— pod” cannot save you from horniness in a pandemic, and noting that “going on a hike without a face mask is the new f—ing without a condom.”
But even Silverman’s jabs at “white liberals” missing the rise of Trump, or rhetorical queries about “When was this again anyhow?” don’t exactly make us laugh so much as make us think.
It says something that the funniest moment in the whole 43-minute production comes during the end credits, which not only show how they filmed most of the comedians separately to maintain safety protocols during COVID-19, but also the moment in which Haddish asks why she’s dancing, and her off-camera direction informs her, “[SURPRISE MUSICAL GUEST] is singing ‘I Will Remember You’,” and watching Haddish completely lose it.
Our Call: To maintain consistency with my previous recommendation for another year-end “comedy” special, I dare just say SKIP IT to any recapping of 2020, but the novelty of the approach here is worth a viewing, and they do sneak a STREAM IT for me just for keeping me intrigued as to what they were going do to next. It didn’t make me want to stop watching after 20 minutes like Death to 2020 did.

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 Yearly Departed on Amazon Prime Video