Showtime's The Comedy Store is surprisingly listless for a docuseries featuring legendaryiconic comedians

Indiewire

Mike Binder's five-part docuseries on the iconic Sunset Strip comedy club features a veritable Murderers’ Row of comedic talent, says Leonardo Adrian Garcia. "But the cavalcade of stars on display is what makes the interviews themselves so disappointing," says Garcia. "To say Binder’s interview style is relaxed would be an understatement. There is no propulsion to his back-and-forths, which is troubling when these interviews account for the lion’s share of the documentary. There are pauses, especially in his conversations with that aforementioned crop of comedians, that feel as if they’re being captured for a nature documentary or stock footage site ('Two Sexagenarians Awkwardly Converse About The Good Ol’ Days'). This is likely purposeful — a choice meant to harken back to those same comedians shooting the shit backstage — but it ends up feeling listless. And with not enough archival footage to fill the gaps and give all the context needed, these hourlong episodes tend to drag. The history of The Comedy Store is fascinating. And in some ways it feels like trying to cram it into five hours is a fool’s errand, but if that’s the case, shouldn’t everything included demand that same level of interest? Too often, a tangent will take control of the loosely structured chapters or repetitive talking heads can drone on about a single topic. By the time the viewer hears a third old-timer recounting how great and unpredictable Tim Thomerson’s sets used to be, well, it all starts feeling like a documentary made by these older white comedians for other older white comedians. And boy, is it white (and male). Obviously, any documentary attempting to tell the story of an entertainment institution over 40 years old is going to struggle for any kind of representational parity, but The Comedy Store’s almost exclusively white and male roster of alumni is an alarming reminder of just how far the industry has come (or conversely, how awful things used to be). Barely 15 percent of the talking heads are women (not including a brief cameo from Debra Winger, who never performed at The Store, but did date a comic)." ALSO: The Comedy Store tells plenty of great stories, but the docuseries fails to tell a coherent narrative.