TV review: Bo Burnham: Inside is one of the great works of art to come out of the pandemic

For all the jaunty songs and clever phrasing and ingenious lighting effects, he’s miserable

Fri, 25 Jun, 2021 - 17:15

Pat Fitzpatrick

It takes about 70 minutes for Bo Burnham: Inside (Netflix) to make sense. This is probably because I hadn’t heard of him before and didn’t realise that as well as being a comedian, he is also a musician, actor, screenwriter, film director and poet. (This is according to Wikipedia, which isn’t always wrong.)

Anyway, I came to the show thinking he was just a comedian who made a 90 minute Netflix comedy special, written, shot and edited by himself, because of Covid. So I assumed it was going to be full of gags about masks and trying to make conversation with the guy from Deliveroo. And there was a bit of that in fairness, including a disarmingly funny song about a FaceTime call with his Mom.