Live comedy thrived in 2025, with scores of outstanding shows making the way around the Australian festival circuit and plenty of intriguing specials available online.
Here are some of my favourites, from stand-up to sketch, and beyond.
Best comedy shows of 2025 – quick links
Jerrod Carmichael: Don’t Be Gay (Apple TV)
Plenty of comedians pride themselves on being purveyors of the unvarnished truth, but few turn that lens inwards with such startling comic effect as Jerrod Carmichael. In Don’t Be Gay, he outlines how he enjoys being in an open relationship, except for the part where his boyfriend gets to sleep with other people.
He also gets laughs when he describes how he loves the money his newfound fame has brought him, though he hates the expectation that he will financially help those around him.
Credit also goes to director Ari Katcher and editor James Atkinson for producing a document of the show that is alive to every nuance of the script, judiciously moving the camera to hammer home each punchline and amplify every uncomfortable pause.
Scout Boxall: God’s Favourite
Stranded in a small town without their medication for bipolar disorder for the first time in more than a decade, Scout Boxall finds themselves unravelling. The Melbourne comic used every tool at their disposal – costume changes, detail-rich sound design, atmospheric lighting and some of the sharpest writing around – to create an immersive and consistently funny portrait of mental ill health.
Taking tongue-in-cheek swipes at the many comics who live with ADHD, Boxall’s tale included memorable digressions into misadventures with cryptocurrency and the LARP dating scene, as the central narrative kept us hooked and howling with laughter.
The Burton Brothers
I saw no less than three shows featuring these hyper-talented siblings in 2025: an encore of last year’s lauded sketch collection 1925, their newest rambunctious adventure Fortune Seekers, and Josh Burton’s winning kids’ show Signor Baffo, featuring a flustered kitchen hand playing head chef, which had its young audience delirious with laughter. Each was a marvel of superlative character work and rubber-limbed physical comedy, which made for gloriously escapist entertainment.
Noah Szto: Med School
Last year, Noah Szto won the Best Newcomer award at Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Far from resting on his laurels, which would be understandable given that he also works as a doctor, he continued his ascent with the winning Med School.
It was an hour with a bit of everything: Szto told self-effacing stories from the long, hard slog of studying to be a doctor, he sang, he danced, he even performed an invasive medical procedure on himself. Med School was a confident, crowd-pleasing work that sets Szto up for even bigger things.
Phoebe Robinson: I Don’t Wanna Work Anymore (YouTube)
‘I’m so tired, and it’s all Destiny’s Child’s fault,’ Robinson quips early in her second special. It’s the kind of energetic hour that flies by in a flurry of sharp tags. (I thought we’d run out of ways to make fun of British dentistry; I stand corrected.) Robinson’s breezily conversational style belies punchy observations on Hollywood sexism and how we’ve all been sold a pup in our embrace of hustle culture. In bits outlining why she’s a ‘blue-collar masturbator’ and why DJ Khaled needs to go to therapy, Robinson proved herself a creative force.
Emma Holland: Don’t Touch My Trinkets
Does a street photographer have the right to make art from people they see in a public sphere? Does a comedian’s art give them licence to turn anyone they meet into on-stage fodder? The weighty questions were at the heart of Emma Holland’s latest hour, and while they don’t exactly sound like classic comic fodder, she’s never been one to pursue the obvious paths to laughs. Racing down internet rabbit holes, creating zany art and following trains of thought to the strangest places, Holland proved again that surprise is integral to comedy.
Geraldine Hickey: Meander
Dithering gets a bad rap these days. We’re all told to take on a side hustle to get ahead and to maximise our productivity at both work and in our downtime. Beloved stand-up veteran Geraldine Hickey goes the other way in her aptly named Meander.
The show covers her time on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! but its most enduring bits sprung from Hickey’s ability to render life’s small but amusing moments and her ear for well-chosen snippets of Australian vernacular.
Mike Birbiglia: The Good Life (Netflix)
Parenthood and mortality have been recurring concerns in Mike Birbiglia’s recent specials, and in The Good Life, a seemingly innocuous question from his daughter about the name of a Brooklyn weed dispensary sparks this wide-ranging reflection. Blending snappy one-liners (on his disinterest in home porn: ‘After I have sex, all I can think is “At least no one saw that”’) with perfectly judged longform storytelling, Birbiglia again demonstrated that a great stand-up comedian can compel with little more than a microphone and their imagination.
Atsuko Okatsuka: Father (Hulu, Disney+)
Approaching familiar stand-up topics from fresh angles, from the in-jokes developed by couples to making friends in middle age and the division of domestic labour, the bowl-cut sporting stand-up Atsuko Okatsuka created a brightly appealing special that sealed her ascent from viral star to comedy’s mainstream. While her fans see her as a mother figure, she sees herself more as a father type as she only recently learned how to operate the washing machine.
Gillian Cosgriff: Fresh New Worries
A clever inversion of her award-winning Actually, Good, Cosgriff’s latest work found her riffing on worries suggested by audience members. Weaving these improvised sections into jaunty, joke-dense musical comedy and personal stories, Cosgriff created a multi-faceted comedy show that stared down our collective anxieties and still landed somewhere hopeful.
