Russell Howard - Lubricant review: A fun take on life during the pandemic

3.5/5

Story: In 2019, comedian Russel Howard was preparing for one of his biggest world tours to coincide with his 20 years in stand-up comedy, which would end with a show in London for a Netflix special. The tour didn’t exactly pan out, but the special did, much later, as a two-part show. The first is the fun part and the second is a look back at the making of Russel Howard the comedian and his years since.

Review: British comedian Russell Howard has not killed anyone, but now has as many Netflix specials as Ted Bundy; now that should tell you about the degree of his popularity, at least in the UK. His latest, Russell Howard: Lubricant, is a two-part show, one of which has the actual stand-up comedy, while the second, Until the wheels come off, is a documentary about Russell, his two decades in comedy, how he dealt with the pandemic and so on and so forth.

It’s the comedy that you are more likely to enjoy if you are not in the UK, and are not familiar with his body of work on British telly. He kicks off the stand-up special, which was shot at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, with a quip about how things have changed… “Corona was a beer, Harry was a prince and nobody was singing about having a wet-ass pu**y. I love that song, it was the biggest selling record during a global pandemic.“ He wound that up with how confusing that will be for future generations. “Think about it, the bubonic plague, what was the song? A tissue, a tissue, we all fall down. COVID! Spit in my mouth, look in my eye. This pussy wet, come take a dive…. They are gonna be baffled. ‘Hang on, so people were dying and you were singing about having drizzly growlers?’”

Throughout the hour, Russell pokes fun at people who take stuff they read on Facebook too seriously, with a spot-on description of Mark Zuckerberg’s platform as a kaleidoscope of mania and bullshit, British politics, how we blame stuff on animals, like catfishing, badger badgering, snitching like a rat, etc. He also takes a dig at anti-vaxxers, among other relevant matters. It’s a fun hour, no doubt. The second part of the show is a look back at Russel’s start in comedy, the break during the pandemic, during which he isolated with his parents while his wife, who’s a doctor, went into frontline Covid care, heading to New Zealand to gig again and much more.

Verdict: Stream it, at least the first half – it’s good fun!