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You can’t say Aziz Ansari doesn’t know his audience. He begins Saturday night’s gig with a promise to finish well before the England kick-off. And his ending is underscored by a performance of national anthem-elect Wonderwall on the organ that looms above the stage. In between, we get a slick hour-long account of where Ansari’s life is at: three years into a cross-cultural marriage, partly resident in London (which may explain his feeling for the locals’ priorities), and trying, so far in vain, to start a family. In the hands of a hugely gifted comic who makes funny look easy, it all zips by – entertainingly, if a little glibly.
In that respect, it’s a return to pre-scandal Aziz, the gilded Parks and Recreation star who made it into the comedy big league with whip-smart social commentary so smooth it barely touched the sides. There is less sign here of the more troubled, later-career Ansari, whose work grew markedly less sunny after he was publicly accused of sexual misconduct. (He said he had apologised to the woman after learning of her discomfort, having believed the encounter was consensual.) Here, in a suit so shiny Ben Elton might blush, he fires off peppy and often provocative gags that skate eye-catchingly over the surface of his life, and our times, without ever carving too deep a furrow.
Some of his best material is his earliest, as he mocks the tenuousness of his own cultural identity (“I’m a level-zero Indian”) and draws a very droll comparison between his own and JD Vance’s interracial marriages. Later, there is some fruitful taboo-teasing as Ansari speculates what colour of baby he may one day have, and from which parent’s culture it will take its name.
There is a streak of devilry to this material that’s lacking in the first half of the show, which detours divertingly but non-urgently via our host’s supposed YouTube addiction and a shaggy dog story about mistaken identities at a celebrity party. One routine strongly echoes his compatriot Bill Hicks’s famous riff on English “hooligans”, as Ansari mocks the unthreatening nature of safety announcements on the London tube.
In the second half-hour, Ansari addresses his and his wife’s fertility journey. At a time when comedy no longer runs scared of emotional candour, he keeps this material fairly upbeat, with gags about how less taxing the process is for husband than wife, and the obligatory anecdote about the pornography served up at the sperm clinic. Perkiness is his prerogative – it is a comedy show, after all – but it lands a bit facile all the same. That feeling is compounded by his have-cake-and-eat-it closing routine, in which he quotes and then undercuts a tender text exchange between himself and his wife.
But if this isn’t a deep cut of Ansari, there is recompense in the form of several adroit set-pieces: the spiralling ad absurdum number in which he seeks cultural sensitivity advice from a chatbot is very much a standout.
Over and done with by 9.30pm, this would not have been a show worth missing a World Cup quarter-final for. But as a munchable hors d’oeuvre, you can’t fault it.
