Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chris Fleming: HELL’ On Peacock, An Internet Darling With A Warped Worldview

Chris Fleming became an internet darling a decade ago thanks to his webseries, “Gayle,” and was named one of Variety’s 10 Comics to Watch in 2019. He’s finally breaking through in a much bigger way in 2023 with his Peacock debut, which combines segments of his stand-up with sketches and surreal visualizations. If one person’s trash is another’s treasure, then it’d certainly stand to reason that HELL may be heavenly for some comedy fans, right? Indeed.

CHRIS FLEMING: HELL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: This is at least Fleming’s second special, though his first for a major SVOD streaming platform (he recorded his 2017 special, Showpig, for Facebook Live. Remember Facebook Live?!?).

HELL, filmed at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles, finds Fleming on an existential journey, punctuated by scenes filmed both backstage and in the audience to interrupt his onstage train of thought. It’s brought to us by Jax Media (whose pedigree includes Search Party, Russian Doll, and The Other Two) and counts Jen Statstky among its executive producers; Statsky, of course, best-known as a co-creator/co-writer of Max’s award-winning series about stand-up comedy, Hacks. Oh, did I mention it’s also a musical comedy?

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: If Pee-wee’s Playhouse were run by an asexual adult.

Memorable Jokes: To say he doesn’t start things off on the right foot is putting it mildly!

Indeed, the 70-minute special opens with a sketch backstage before the show, wherein Fleming fumbles the mic, trips over a crew guy’s man bun, and cartoonishly crashes into the stairs, legs akimbo somehow pointing up through said stairs.

With the live studio audience, Fleming will lead them in song. One includes photos and lyrics onscreen in case you want to karaoke-style singalong with him about his neighborhood. Later, you’ll lyrically love the eternal debate about how better to spend $4.99: “Driscoll’s or a gerbil?” And you’ll learn how Fleming and his father bonded over Phil Collins, but not the Phil Collins song you’re thinking of. Not that one, either.

Every so often, the action cuts away from Fleming’s stand-up to a sketch. A recurring bit casts him as Tom FatCat, the network executive who wonders whether he should green-light Fleming’s special; at one point, Fleming agrees to become brand ambassador for a new day of the week (in a sketch within the sketch featuring Aparna Nancherla). Another bit imagines “the penisless pigs” who live within the walls behind the worst seats in the theater, normally surviving on wood but sometimes wanting to kiss you lest you sit in that corner of the audience. Fleming creates an entire backstory for this creature, which should come as no surprise to longtime fans of his, who’ve previously come to appreciate DePiglio, or Gigi the Christmas Snake.

A cornhole bit is teased and delivered.

Fleming also dishes about his childhood in stories about pets, his aunts, and their beliefs about what the other kids in Chris’s class allegedly were doing sexually at such a young age. He acts out these tales with gleeful abandon, ending one with: “And that explains my vibe…christened by a seaside coven.”

Our Take: In a sketch closing out the special, network exec Tom FatCat struggles to make sense of the global demographics, and who they’ve responded to Chris Fleming. And yet the opening backstage sketch goes a long way in establishing just who Fleming is and for whose comedy tastes he may prove delicious. While Fleming’s physically stuck in the stairs, the crew considers replacing him immediately: “Maybe we just shoot Nikki Glaser’s Two in the Pink or Bert Kreischer’s Ass Man.” Onstage, Fleming offers another alternative: “This is not for people with wives. You have a wife? Go see Mike Birbiglia.”

“This is for theater people who don’t get cast,” Fleming says. “I’m the Pied Piper of the backstage chorus.”

He’s also willing to be confused for “the lady who judges the parade,” or “flamboyant but vacant.” He can even handle someone comparing his look to Andy Dick.

But timing is everything. So in the wake of the death of Paul Reubens, watching Fleming this month prompts some serious mention of the connection between what Fleming exudes onstage and what Reubens accomplished with Pee-wee Herman. Of course, Reubens always maintained a youthful attitude as Pee-wee. Fleming’s playhouse is a bit darker, more adult (with profanity), but surreal and sassy and somehow equally asexual all the same.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Fleming shares with the audience a photo of his family, with him as a child, the youngest of the flock, the only one staring into the camera. At points during the special, he’s also well of where the stage cameras are. This comedian is ready for his close up.

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.