The flying comedian

Comedians mine insights. That's the job. They observe something nobody has explored in quite the same way, finding a different vantage point, a different take, a different hypothetical what-if tangent, to make a greater—or a more amusing—point.

- RAJA SEN

Comedians mine insights. That's the job. They observe something nobody has explored in quite the same way, finding a different vantage point, a different take, a different hypothetical what-if tangent, to make a greater—or a more amusing—point. "What's the deal with airline food?" is the line used to distil (and mimic) the observational stylings of Jerry Seinfeld, for instance. The question now is what a comedian does with that point. Mostly, a nugget of insight gets polished into an episode, a film, a concept. What if a comedian could do more? Much more. What if—as shown on The Rehearsal—the insight of a comedian could actually make a difference, even to an infinitesimal degree, to improve the dynamic within the cockpit of an airplane?

"I believe that any human quality can be learned," says Nathan Fielder, "Or at least emulated." The Canadian comedian first broke onto the scene with Nathan For You, where he pitched and executed absurd ideas to help small business owners. It's a small, mad series I have previously described in this column as "Borat with a business degree." Armed with an HBO budget, Fielder's ambitions get supersized in The Rehearsal (JioHotstar), where he constructs a painstakingly exact replica of a pub in order to help a person practise confessing a lie to a friend. That fascinating season gets progressively wilder, right up to rehearsing parenthood. The second season literally soars.