Episode Guide
Recognise Represent Reset Recap Split across four episodes, James Acaster’s Repertoire is a well written, witty and incredibly funny stand-up series from start to finish. With a variety of different topics explored and a perfect use of silence to accentuate said jokes, James Acaster’s four-part comedy is an excellent show and one well worth checking out. Each stand-up can be viewed individually here too although they all work together as a cohesive whole, with some jokes spilling over into other episodes for maximum comedic effect. The stand-ups arguably get better as they go along too, with the final 2 episodes on-point and perfectly executed. With each episode coming in at a little under an hour run time each, there’s a whole wealth of content explored. While I won’t write out every topic discussed, suffice to say there’s an excellent variety of topics here including different jobs, friends, societal issues and more. This really helps keep each individual episode feeling fresh and original with the sheer wealth of material that’s used here. Stylistically, Repertoire is minimalistic in its design. Each of the four shows have a dominant colour used against the basic backdrop with James usually wearing the same or complementing colours to help him stand out. Each show has a great use of props too and whether it be a cassette player, tally chart or more specific costume props, James does an amazing job keeping things unpredictable with the camera work matching these segments with a variety of close-up and full body shots. Of course, given the specific type of comedy portrayed here, if you’re not sold on the first episode it’s unlikely you’ll find much else in the rest of the shows to get excited about. In many ways James’ style relies heavily on these unusual, sporadic tangents and while most people will certainly take to his wild, eccentric mannerisms, some may not. It’s ultimately this unpredictability that make this show so funny and unusual though. You never quite know what James Acaster is going to talk about next and it’s part of the allure with his persona that these shows are put on in the way that they are. Netflix have done an excellent job encapsulating this methodical madness too, brigning together a solid, impressive stand-up series well worth checking out.
