Larry Charles' Dangerous World of Comedy

What do people laugh about in countries where Ebola, religious fanaticism or civil war is raging? Are there any comedians in Saudi Arabia? How much do local entertainers contribute to Nigeria’s rape culture? Larry Charles, director of Borat and The Dictator, made a four-episode series about humour in dangerous places, whether that involves the military, the environment of the American far right or a given country where you can be abducted, tortured and killed for telling the wrong kind of joke. It’s enlightening, courageous, slightly perverse (when, for example, Charles coaxes a former Liberian general into revealing what human flesh tastes like), and it encourages the consideration of comedy as a means of coping with adversity and surviving in a world full of pain, suffering and influential idiots. (2022.02.15)