Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Romesh Ranganathan: The Cynic’ On Netflix, The British Comedian Gets More Realistic About His Relationships

American viewers may have a completely different take on Romesh Ranganathan than his fellow Brits, who’ve seen the comedian on their telly for the past several years as either a game show host, a panelist, or a straight-up stand-up comic. So who’s the real cynic going to be in Ranganathan’s first Netflix comedy special, which also includes a half-hour behind-the-scenes making-of documentary.

ROMESH RANGANATHAN: THE CYNIC: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Ranganathan came to America four years ago with his family in tow, starring in a 10-episode docuseries for Showtime, Just Another Immigrant, which got him to The Greek, as it were, culminating in his first U.S. comedy special, Just Another Immigrant: Romesh At The Greek.
If that didn’t ring any bells for you, then you might have better luck placing him if you’d watched last year’s Cinderella reboot for Prime Video (he played Romesh the Mouse), or Saweetie’s Netflix special, Sex: Unzipped. The comedian also has booked a role in the upcoming long-awaited Chicken Run sequel for Netflix, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
But this son of Sri Lankan immigrants is definitely tailored more for his fellow Brits, and not just because he filmed his Netflix debut in his hometown of Crawley. Crawley sits just south of Gatwick Airport, about halfway between London and Brighton, and even Ranganathan refers to it as a “shithole” in the opening minute. This hour (plus the companion half-hour doc) also feels tailor-made for showing us Ranganathan’s place in British culture. While he’s clearly a familiar face there — he replaced James Corden as host of A League of Their Own, a sports-based panel game show not to be confused with the American movie or TV series, on Sky One; and he replaced Anne Robinson as the host of The Weakest Link on BBC One — the multiple BAFTA TV Award winner still grapples with how people perceive him when they do recognize him, and spends the bulk of this special reconciling his relationships with his wife and his kids as he ages into his mid-40s.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: By adding the extra half-hour episode to flesh out his family dynamics, Ranganathan seems to have taken a page out of not only his own book from Showtime, but also Russell Howard’s 2021 special and doc for Netflix, Lubricant.

Memorable Jokes: It’s an hour full of digressions, but always coming back to a few central set pieces and themes: Briefly losing track of one of his sons at Brighton Beach, how he realized he needed to lose weight and gain testosterone if he wanted to live a longer, healthier life, and the implications of that on his sex life with the wife of his three sons.
He also opens with his take on Will Smith and Chris Rock at the Oscars. The most interesting premise he uncovers in that process? Wondering if the Oscars production staff and everyone else sat back and did nothing because, being mostly White, they might’ve thought that’s just how Black people act now, and didn’t want to “impinge on their culture.” Me-ow!
Our Take: He’s also quite cheeky early in this hour by suggesting, contrary to some old-timers in comedy who cultivated conventional wisdom about success in the business being a meritocracy, that “they don’t want to admit that…it’s luck” that got most of them famous. He admits it, though: “The main reason I’m in front of you tonight is luck.” Don’t believe him? Just imagine you’re the funniest person in a remote jungle where your village only speaks a rare language! Good luck to that person getting Netflix’s attention.
Now that Ranganathan has that attention, he worries about fans approaching him and his family in public, asking and pointing at his sons to find out which one is the son he mocks the most. He notes that hating vegans (of which he is one) seems to be more popular than actually being vegan, and in time for the holidays, wonders how the general populace would react if we actually cared about all animals or the environment, rather than just squawking about an LGBT sandwich at Marks & Spencer (a British retailer).
Despite the title, he doesn’t come across all that cynically.
Even if he’s only famous enough for strangers to recognize him at an amusement park, only to second-guess themselves, and even if he’s not as desirable in a Marine uniform as his game-show co-stars are, he recognizes he’s privileged just by virtue of the life he and his kids can live, especially when compared to his immigrant parents. Perhaps the most cynical he gets is when he concludes his story about his missing son at the beach, warily watching the boy lick up his ice cream reward. Just desserts, indeed.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Much like last year’s Russell Howard offerings for Netflix, my gut tells me that Americans and anyone else unfamiliar with Ranganathan’s comedy would enjoy it much more if they watched the documentary episode BEFORE clicking on the stand-up portion.

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 Romesh Ranganathan: The Cynic on Netflix