History
What Is Alternative Comedy?
It began as a protest against racist club comics in 1979 London and became the name for any comedy that refuses the usual rules. Here is what “alt” actually means, where it came from and how to recognise it.
The guide to alternative comedy
Comedy that refuses to behave.
Anti-jokes, ten-minute silences, songs about loneliness and sketches that shouldn't work but do. We cover the comedians, specials, shows and scenes that took comedy somewhere it wasn't supposed to go, and explain why they matter.
Start here
New to alternative comedy? These guides will get you up to speed.
History
Alt Comedy Timeline, 1953 to 2026
From a man with a newspaper at the hungry i to a special premiering on YouTube, here are the moments that shaped alternative comedy, decade by decade.
History
Alt Comedy Glossary (A–Z)
What's a tag? Who's hack? Why did the comic say they ate it? A plain-English glossary of the words comedians, bookers and critics actually use.
History
Anti-Comedy: The Definitive Guide
A lounge comic who hates you, a moth at the podiatrist, a man reading The Great Gatsby aloud until the audience leaves. Anti-comedy turns the failure of a joke into the joke.
Comedians
Top 10 Alt Comedians of 2026
Ten comedians doing the most interesting work in alternative comedy right now, ranked, with the reason for each pick and the best place to start.
Explore by section
History & ScenesFrom the 1979 Comedy Store to today's pop-up rooms.
ComediansProfiles of the pioneers, the cult heroes and the new wave.
Shows & SpecialsGuides to the essential series, specials, albums and podcasts.
Craft & CareerHow to write, perform, record and tour your own work.
Essays & IdeasEthics, mental health, philosophy and the future of funny.
Most read
The guides readers come back to most.
- The Ethics of Comedy
- Fleabag: The Complete Guide
- Cultural Comedy Differences
- Mr. Show with Bob and David: The Guide
- Comedy and Mental Health
- The Rehearsal: Season-by-Season Guide
- The Kids in the Hall: The Guide
- Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees
- John Early: Search Party to Maddie's Secret
- 100 Essential Sketches on YouTube
Comedians
The people who rewrote the rules, and the ones rewriting them now.
Comedians
Andy Kaufman: The Full Story
He lip-synced a cartoon theme, read The Great Gatsby to paying crowds and wrestled women on network television. Forty years after his death, Andy Kaufman is still the reference point for every comedian who makes the audience wonder what's real.
Comedians
John Early: Search Party to Maddie's Secret
Elliott Goss, a rock-doc stand-up special, a fake reunion special with Kate Berlant and a camp melodrama he wrote, directed and starred in. A guide to the most theatrical comedian of his generation.
Comedians
Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees
Ninety-odd minutes on one subject, written like an essay and performed like a seduction. The story of Get On Your Knees, and of the writer-comedian behind it.
Comedians
Stewart Lee: Style & Where to Start
He tells you which bits aren't working, which parts of the room don't get it, and then does the joke again. Why Stewart Lee's deconstructed stand-up is the central British alt comedy act of the century.
Comedians
Maria Bamford: Career Profile
Your favourite comedian's favourite comedian, finally getting the documentary. Three decades of Maria Bamford, from Minneapolis open mics to Netflix, a bestselling memoir and Sundance.
Comedians
Julio Torres: Career Profile
A Salvadoran writer who turned SNL's oddest sketches into a career of his own: two HBO series, an A24 film with Tilda Swinton and specials about shapes and colours.
Comedians
Nathan Fielder: Career & Filmography
A business graduate from Vancouver who built a career out of awkward silences, absurd schemes and real people. The full story of Nathan Fielder’s work, project by project.
Comedians
Jamie Loftus: Podcasts, Books, Comedy
Mensa, Nabokov, Cathy comics, Spiritualists, hot dogs and the internet's forgotten viral stars. How a stand-up built the most distinctive catalogue in comedy podcasting.
Shows & specials
Definitive guides to the series and specials that changed the form.
Shows
Mr. Show with Bob and David: The Guide
Thirty episodes, four seasons, a terrible time slot and a writers’ room that seeded twenty years of American comedy. How Bob Odenkirk and David Cross built the sketch show everyone else studied.
Shows
The Rehearsal: Season-by-Season Guide
A replica bar in Brooklyn, a fake family in Oregon, a singing competition for airline pilots and a real Boeing 737. What Nathan Fielder set out to do in The Rehearsal, and what he ended up doing instead.
Shows
Nanette, Explained
Sixty-nine minutes at the Sydney Opera House that start as a stand-up show and end as an indictment of one. A close look at how Nanette is built, why it landed, and the arguments it still starts.
Shows
I Think You Should Leave: The Guide
Eighteen short episodes about men who will not admit they’re wrong. How Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin made the defining sketch show of its era, and what’s next.
Shows
The Kids in the Hall: The Guide
Five men from Toronto and Calgary, a theme tune by a surf-rock band and a head-crushing man on a street corner. Why the Kids in the Hall still feel weirder and braver than most sketch made since.
Shows
Tim and Eric: The Complete Guide
Fifty eleven-minute episodes of public-access nightmare, fake products and John C. Reilly as Dr. Steve Brule. How Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim made the ugliest show on television, and why so much internet comedy now looks like it.
Shows
50 Greatest Alt Comedy Specials
From Richard Pryor in Long Beach to Jacqueline Novak off-Broadway: the stand-up hours and albums that changed what a comedy special could be.
Shows
Best Comedy Podcasts of All Time
Seventeen years of garages, improv riffs, bad movies and dream meals, boiled down to the 25 shows that defined the medium.
Want to make this stuff?
Practical, no-nonsense guides for performers: from your first open mic to self-releasing a special.
Craft & career
Craft
How to Start in Alt Comedy
Your first mic, your first five minutes, your first bomb and what to do the morning after. A practical route into the weirder end of stand-up.
Craft
Comedy Writing Techniques
Fourteen named tools that sit under most jokes, sketches and bits, from the rule of three to reverse-world logic, each with an original example and an exercise.
Craft
How to Write a Fringe Hour
A Fringe hour isn't five club sets glued together. It's one idea, held for fifty-odd minutes, that ends somewhere the audience didn't see coming.
Craft
How to Start a Comedy Podcast
The microphone is the easy part. The hard part is a format someone can describe in one sentence and a release schedule you can keep for a year.
Essays & ideas
The big questions: what comedy is for, what it can get away with, and what it costs the people who make it.
Ideas
The Ethics of Comedy
Every joke has a target, a room and a reason. A clear-eyed guide to the philosophy, the real controversies and the working tests comedians use to decide whether a joke is worth the cost.
Ideas
Comedy and Mental Health
The idea that great comedians are secretly miserable is centuries old and mostly unexamined. Here is what researchers have actually measured, what comedians have said in their own words, and what the job itself does to people.
Ideas
Comedy and Philosophy
Philosophers have distrusted laughter and prescribed it in roughly equal measure. On irony, the absurd, and the comedians whose work is philosophy in everything but name.
Ideas
Comedy and Activism: Real Cases
Jokes rarely pass laws. Comedians sometimes do. A field guide to the campaigns, benefits and stunts where comedy stopped commenting on the world and tried to fix part of it.
Ideas
Absurdist and Surreal Comedy
Talking objects, sketches that never end and characters who accept the impossible without blinking. A guide to the comedy of nonsense, and why it's harder to write than it looks.
Ideas
AI and Comedy: Can Machines Be Funny?
From 1990s pun generators to an AI Seinfeld banned from Twitch and a fake George Carlin special, here is what actually happened when comedy met artificial intelligence, and why the writers' guild fought so hard over it.
History & scenes
- British Alt Comedy, 1979 to NowIt began as a political revolt against mother-in-law jokes in a Soho strip-club attic. Forty-plus years later it runs British TV, Edinburgh in August and half of Netflix's comedy imports.
- Alt Comedy in the 1990sThe comedy-club boom collapsed, and a generation of comics went looking for somewhere else to be funny. What they built in LA and New York between 1988 and 1999 still defines American alt comedy.
- UCB Theatre: A HistoryA sketch group from Chicago opened a basement theatre in Chelsea and accidentally built the main talent pipeline of 21st-century American comedy. Then it nearly vanished.
- Largo at the CoronetA music club that let comedians in by the side door became the room where LA's best comics try things they wouldn't try anywhere else. No phones, no talking, no exceptions.
- The Chicago Comedy SceneImprov was invented as a serious art form in Chicago, then exported to New York, Los Angeles and SNL. Here's the whole lineage, from the Compass Players to the DIY stand-up rooms.
- World Alt Comedy ScenesManzai battles in Osaka, English-language open mics in Berlin, crosstalk in Beijing and Instagram skits in Lagos. Where to look for interesting comedy when you leave London and New York behind.