The 25 Best Stand-Up Specials on Netflix

Netflix has been producing and distributing original stand-up specials for well over a decade, with no indication that they are slowing down. In 2024 alone, the streaming service released more than 40 original specials, six of which are included on this list. As of February, Netflix seems to be on a similar pace for 2025, with five new specials airing since the start of the year.

But a healthy comedy diet requires one to look beyond the new. For the best laughs, peer into the past to discover some specials for the first time, or revisit old favorites to discern their staying power. The great stuff never goes out of style. 

From seasoned pros like Chris Rock, Ali Wong, and Adam Sandler, to relative newcomers like Nicole Byer, Dusty Slay, and Jacqueline Novak, here are the 25 best stand-up specials to watch on Netflix right now. 

Sam Jay 3 in the Morning (2020)

Great specials often belie the craft at the root of their creation. Some comics are so adept at making us feel as though we are in a private, casual conversation with them, that it is easy to overlook the careful structure of their material and the mastery with which it is delivered. Such is the case with Sam Jay in 3 in the Morning. The throughline of the special is Sam’s relationship with her girlfriend, a line on which she is able to thread jokes about running into men she used to sleep with, fights while traveling, and not wanting to have children. All of this is delivered like the frustrated musings of a friend. But Jay deviates from the personal to offer her thoughts on a range of topics: Carrying her girlfriend’s bag? “I have no chivalry in me.” #MeToo allegations against Aziz Ansari? “We gotta teach girls to fight.” Greta Thunberg? “Annoying.” Everything is fair game for Sam Jay. To watch this special is to see the debut of one of the best comics working today. 

Bill Burr Paper Tiger (2019)

In Paper Tiger, Bill Burr describes his marriage as such: “We’re always working on me.” But the sentiment could also be used to describe the relationship between Burr and his comedy, and by extension we in his audience. Over the years, the comic has emerged as one of the most self-reflective of his generation, commenting on his race and gender, and the privilege they provide. Paper Tiger begins with the comic launching into a tirade against political correctness, sounding like the average (albeit much funnier) white dude comic. But then Burr flips the script, and begins to deconstruct his own anger, his own inability to communicate and deal with his emotions. He remains, to this day, a dude just trying to figure it all out. It’s in this special where one sees that process truly begin to flourish. 

Adam Sandler Love You (2024)

Few comedians feel so singular. It’s not just that Adam Sandler wears what he wants, sings when he wants, and performs where he wants (including in this special). It’s his unrelenting sincerity in a time where pessimism is king. With guitar in hand, Sandler sings and does baby talk in the way that audiences have come to expect from his work. Yet in this special, he pairs the act with reflections on his own age and life’s work. He ends the Love You with a beautiful tribute to the history of the comedy, naming, citing, singing his appreciation for the dozens of comics who have shaped him and us. And we all get to feel sincerely grateful, together.

Hannibal Buress Comedy Camisado (2016)

Comedy Camisado came after the routine that launched a thousand ships. It was in 2014 that Hannibal Buress went viral for a routine included in his stand-up act about sexual assault allegations made against Bill Cosby. Buress addresses the fallout here, along with the unexpected fame it brought him. “Who knew that an off-hand joke about Cosby raping would lead to me having amazing consensual sex across the country?” Buress says, to enthusiastic applause from the live audience. But the special is about a whole lot more, with Buress showing himself to be a wonderful plate-spinner, seamlessly jumping from one disparate topic to the next, from gambling and LASIK surgery, to child actors and deviled actors. There is no subject from which Buress cannot draw out a laugh.

Chris Rock Tamborine (2018)

“The American justice system should be just like Walmart,” Chris Rock says in Tamborine. “If you can find a lighter sentence, we’ll match it!” So much of Rock’s masterful special has to do with fairness. This ranges from the structural racism of the criminal justice system, to the unfair ways that parents try to protect their children from the harshness of the world: “We need bullies!” It is classic Rock, bringing to the stage his own internal logic —”George Bush is a Black revolutionary.” — and somehow assembling all together in a completely sensical way. The special is at its best when Rock gets personal talking about his then-recent divorce. He admits to cheating and discusses the fear he felt while in child court. It’s a moving, hilarious piece of work by a stand-up master. 

Hannah Gadsby Nanette (2017)

Hannah Gadsby’s special feels as real, raw, and fresh as ever. The special, rightly celebrated at the time of its release, features Gadsby’s reflections on art, both their own and the art world writ large. In the special, Gadsby gives a master class in the tonal shift, going from goofy to deeply serious, all while keeping their audience fully captivated. Among the special’s finest moments is when Gadsby considers an exit from comedy, or, rather, closing the chapter on an era of comedy that foregrounded self-deprecation over healing. Nanette came at the height of the #MeToo movement and immediately following the first election of Donald Trump, but its themes contain a degree of universality that make the special just as essential a watch now as eight years ago.

Trevor Noah Where Was I (2023)

Trevor Noah released Where Was I the year after he vacated the host chair of The Daily Show. In the special, he comes back to prove why he helmed one of the most venerated news program in America, providing the ultimate outsider-insider commentary on American life; a man who had lived close enough to see the country for all it is, but retained his distance just enough to see that to which so many are blind. He comments on America’s complete abdication of history, the country’s obsession with bathrooms, and the even more intense obsession over the national anthem. “Only country in the world where you’re allowed to sing the anthem however you want,” he says, before going into a long bit about live performance and elaborate renditions of the anthem, including giving one himself. “Why are you trying to make the anthem sexy? What are you doing? I never understand that.”

Lucas Brothers On Drugs (2017)

Brothers Keith and Kenny Lucas begin On Drugs by declaring war on Richard Nixon, who, in 1971, declared a war on drugs, leading to the incarceration of millions, disproportionately impacting Black Americans, including members of the identical twins’ own family. Flanked by cardboard cutouts of the 37th U.S. President bowling, the brothers discuss much more than their hatred of the man, including dropping out of law school, pro sports, and credit cards. Beyond their commentary, delivered in a deadpan style, the special is one of the finest examples of a duo working in perfect tandem, never missing a beat. Take for example, when the Lucas brothers (who never identify themselves by first name) share a story about smoking weed at work and facing “twin discrimination.” “One time the boss caught us and he fired us. And the weird thing is he fired us at the same time for the same exact reason,” one Lucas brother says. “And you don’t want to get fired like that,” the other Lucas brother replies. “Because not only are you getting fired, but it’s kind of like you’re watching yourself get fired in 3-D.” 

Ronny Chieng Love to Hate It (2024)

Many will know Ronny Chieng best from his work behind the desk and in the field at The Daily Show. In that job, he is most often seated, or standing still. In Love to Hate It, Chieng gets to show off his physical comedy chops, like when he impersonates Baby Boomers or recounts running home and back to the hospital in order to complete his end of the embryo freezing process. He pairs this commanding stage work with the insightful societal commentary that has made him one of the faux news program’s standouts. Among his best bits is a riff on how the internet algorithm so easily manipulates men looking for guidance, taking them from workout videos to storming the capitol faster than the click of a mouse. “That’s why fucking Mark Zuckerberg is trying to MMA fight Elon Musk right now,” he says. “Even the good guys in this room, we’re on a razor’s edge to being a piece of shit, okay?”

Anthony Jeselnik Bones and All (2024)

No one delivers a punch-line like Anthony Jeselnik. His shocking twists and turns of the mind have made him one of the most beloved characters of stand-up in the last twenty years. In this special, Jeselnik does more of the same, while getting surprisingly sentimental, or, as sentimental as his persona can be. He starts by noting his two-decade anniversary in comedy, and ends with memories of working with his self-described hero, Norm MacDonald. While perhaps at first a bit jarring against his otherwise ruthless act, it pairs well with the sense of humanity that truly underpins all of Jeselnik’s work, especially the darkest bits of his gallows humor. “I’m against cancel culture,” he says in the special, to cheers. “Thank you. That’s my impression of a shit comic trying to get on Rogan.” To watch Jeselnik is to witness a nearly peerless craftsman, who understands that whatever lesser comics complain about today is, in fact, an excuse for their poor art. “What I am sick of are comedians complaining about cancel culture. It’s not that hard. Do your job,” he says. “Comedians are supposed to be unparalleled badasses. I know this because I have a fucking mirror.”

Marc Maron End Times Fun (2020)

Great comedy transcends time and place. This becomes eerily true while watching Marc Maron’s special, which was released on March 10, 2020. Need more be said? In the special, Maron comments on everything from society’s obsession with turmeric, to the end times of Trump, and the cultish, religious vibes of Marvel superfans. “I think it should be noticed or recognized that both the story of Jesus and the Marvel Universe: created in Jewish writer rooms,” he says. Like much of Maron’s work, the special carries a healthy mix of pessimism and a pinch of hopeful optimism. He sees all the bad out there—and there’s a lot of it. But there is something so deeply human about Maron’s delivery and way of explaining, that it can’t help but inspire a little bit of hope: at least someone is processing all this stuff. 

Patton Oswalt Annihilation (2017)

The last thirty minutes of Patton Oswalt’s Annihilation are among the most moving, funny, devastating you will find. That’s not to say the rest of the special is lacking—it begins with some jokes about Donald Trump’s first term that feel particularly poignant right now. But it is in this portion of the special that Oswalt discusses the unexpected death of his first wife, crime writer Michelle McNamara, and the process of grieving with their young daughter. “I’m just killing time,” he says after bantering with members of the live audience. “This next section is very hard for me to get into.” Oswalt, a master storyteller, then gets into it, talking about everything from the worst day of his life, from actually having to tell his daughter the news, to the superheroes who have failed him in his grief. On Batman visiting the cemetery at night in comics he says: “Cemeteries close at 6:00. I know this. That’s bullshit. If they’re doing that, that means they climbed over the fence like an asshole.”

Ali Wong Baby Cobra (2016)

Time has only been a friend to Baby Cobra. With its release, Ali Wong became the first stand-up comic to record a special while pregnant. “You become like a vampire when you’re pregnant: your senses are so sensitive and your emotions are so heightened,” Wong said in an interview at the time. “That helps with performance because you really feel things.” The visceral physicality of Wong’s performance here, her first Netflix special, is singular, and her honest commentary on topics like sex, relationships, race, and, of course, pregnancy remain fresh and biting nearly a decade later. Since then, Wong has gone on to record three more specials for Netflix, Hard Knock Wife (2018), Don Wong (2022), and Single Lady (2024). All are worth checking out, but it is in this first one where Wong breaks out as a star, and it remains one of the best comedy specials of this century. 

John Mulaney The Comeback Kid (2015)

Few tell a story as well as John Mulaney. And truthfully, one can’t go wrong with any of his specials. But in revisiting this first one, The Comeback Kid, it remains a masterclass in personal narrative. Here, Mulaney feels like a surgeon, dissecting the memories of his life with comedic precision. No word or beat feels out of place. He flies across the stage with gusto, covering a range of topics on middle age, like becoming a homeowner and loving to use the phrase “my wife.” Mulaney is at his best, though, when he reflects on his childhood, including growing up Catholic, the progression of “childrens’ rights” today, and, best of all, the story with which he ends the special: meeting Bill Clinton at a fundraiser when he was ten-years-old, and his father’s decades-long, personal grudge for the former president. 

Maria Bamford Old Baby (2017)

In Old Baby, Maria Bamford draws our attention to the very nature of the stand-up special itself. The conceptual work begins with Bamford in her home talking to herself, then performing for just her husband, only to then begin cutting in and out of spaces, including an outdoor restaurant, bowling alley, and red-curtained, then glimmering, velvet-curtained theater stage. The constant remains Bamford and her act: the tone, the stream of consciousness delivery style, and the topical threads of the show, which includes topics like unconditional love, sex in a marriage, aging, and Hollywood ghosting. “Can’t happen in a small town,” Bamford says. “The person will just say, ‘I see you over there.’”  It is in Old Baby that Bamford takes her roots in the alt-comedy scene to a new level, inviting us to understand that the throughline of the special is not place, audience, or even continuity editing, but the act itself, wherever it might take us, literally and figuratively.  

Tig Notaro Happy to Be Here (2018)

With her signature deadpan-style, Tig Notaro remains a unique voice in stand-up comedy. Among Notaro’s great gifts is her ability to somehow simultaneously draw the audience into her often deeply personal stories and command our attention, while in the same breath deviating to offer meta commentary on the actual show she is performing in that moment. In Happy to Be Here, for example, she often riffs on a joke she is about to tell or has just told. “Listen, laugh all you want. I’m not trying to be braggadocious,” Notaro says while talking about a temp job she once held. “I don’t know if that’s the best thing to say in a special, ‘Oh, yeah. Laugh all you want.’” Notaro deals with a range of topics in the special, from marriage and children, to her own celebrity. The show ends with a remarkable bit that becomes an exercise in seeing just how famous she is in the eyes of her audience. Notaro promises a mystery musical guest is waiting backstage, and plays out an extended joke about whether they are, in fact, behind the curtain. 

Nicole Byer BBW (Big Beautiful Weirdo) (2021)

Ordering a single bottle of ranch for delivery, hookups on the road, and the turmoil of birthdays are just some of the myriad topics Nicole Byer covers in her hilarious debut stand-up special. “A crying white woman with a birthday is literal kryptonite to common sense,” Byers jokes in BBW. “And I’ll tell you guys something: I enjoyed watching Krista cry.” Such is the great simultaneity of Byer’s special. She proves herself to be a keen observer of contemporary society, without ever placing herself above it, nor does she take on the role of judge. Instead, she is down in the muck with us, discussing personal moments, reenacting them with fantastically hilarious physical comedy, and offering her own way of just trying to make sense of the world post-2020, from COVID and the Black Lives Matter movement, to the ubiquity of online “Karen Gone Wild” videos. “Like, is your kid sitting on the couch, scrolling through Instagram being like, Mom?!” Byers asks. “You come in wearing the same shirt and they’re like, Did you come directly from the hate crime?!”

Hasan Minhaj Off With His Head (2024)

Off With His Head is not just a title. The special includes a series of jokes about The New Yorker, which, the year before, had published an article fact-checking some of the stories told by Hasan Minhaj in his previous comedic work. The article came with controversy, with many criticizing the comic, and others coming to the defense of both him and the artistic process. But the special is a whole lot more than that—in fact, Minhaj moves on quite quickly. He seems to indirectly respond to his critics by moving away from the epic storytelling style of his previous specials, instead showcasing his skills as a political and cultural observer, finding the absurdity of our current moment, no matter your persuasions. “Sometimes Biden fans get mad at me. But here’s my thing. Why are you a fan?” he asks. “Imagine walking through downtown San Jose and seeing some loser with a T-shirt. Just like, ‘Citibank!’ You see another guy, ‘No, fuck you, bro! Wells Fargo!’”

Taylor Tomlinson Look at You (2022)

For more than a year, Taylor Tomlinson has hosted After Midnight, the late night comedy game show occupying the hour on CBS immediately after Colbert. Followers of the show this season (its second) will know that one of the best parts of the show is Tomlinson’s often too short monologue. But if you want more of Tomlinson’s own musings on modern life, thankfully, the comic has released a trio of stand-up specials for Netflix. In Look at You, Tomlinson reflects on everything from a recent bipolar diagnosis, to the cost of therapy and losing her mother at a young age. “She’s in heaven, I’m on Netflix, it all worked out,” Tomlinson says. “That is a real thing I said in therapy, to which my therapist responded, ‘You should come in twice this week.’”

Jacqueline Novak Get On Your Knees (2024)

Jokes about male genitalia are often the textbook example of a comedy cliche. In Get On Your Knees, tackles this challenge head on, proving that not all the jokes have been told—not even close. To quote Novak’s special is a futile enterprise. Its greatness comes from its totality, from the way that Novak commands each inch of the stage as she analyzes the subject of oral sex for more than 90 minutes, offering stories of personal experience, anatomical analyses, and philosophical musings. “To me, the blow job, it was just a conquered thing,” she says in the special. “It was an art form I had mastered in a basic way, I had a working definition of, and now I can think about how I might eventually wanna meaningfully subvert that art form.” Such work is certainly achieved in this special.

Mike Birbiglia The Old Man and the Pool (2022)

Mike Birbiglia’s The Old Man and the Pool began as a Broadway show, one that translates seamlessly into the format of a stand-up special, blurring the lines between the two forms in ways that mask just how hard it can be to make up for the distance wrought by the camera. But here, Birbiglia’s raw humanity reaches through, as he discusses aging, death, health, and learning to swim. He acts as a kind of planter, placing seeds of deeply personal information throughout his act, only to pivot, letting the weight of them grow until he is ready to return. Much of the special concerns Birbiglia’s struggle to breathe in a variety of contexts: when a doctor asks him to blow in a tube, when learns he has Type 2 Diabetes, and when he takes swimming lessons in his “drowner’s body” for the first time. The special is about the act of survival, of carrying on. All of this Birbiglia delivers with the perfect blend of the sincere and silly. “If you haven’t seen a nutritionist, you’re not missing too much. They know the same stuff as us,” he says of trying to get healthy. “Imagine your most annoying friend, and then imagine they start charging you.”

Dusty SlayWorkin Man (2024)

Smoking. Drinking. Working as a stand-up. Dipping and driving. To Dusty Slay, all of that, in his words, is the best. Slay’s act is, simply, charming. He feels like a throwback, performing with nothing more than a stool, a glass of water, and minimalistic set design, swaying all the while and occasionally gives the cheering crowd a small wave. He even has a catch-phrase, “We’re having a good time.” A beautiful sentiment for a catch phrase, one of most underappreciated verbal traditions in comedy. Like many of the comics on this list, Slay is a great storyteller, able to both keep the narrative engaging and make jokes about himself and the very act of telling. “I love dipping,” he says. “I didn’t dip Skoal. I dipped Kodiak Wintergreen, but not everybody knows that name brand, so I like to say Skoal ‘cause it’s got brand recognition.”

Beth Stelling: If You Didn’t Want Me Then (2023)

It’s always fun when a comic goes home. In If You Didn’t Want Me Then, Beth Stelling returns to Dayton, Ohio, to offer reflections on the Wright Brothers, field hockey, splitting time as a child with her father in Orlando, and sneaking into frat parties as a teenager. “I feel like the only time men believe women is when we’re lying about being 18,” she says. “Frat dudes are like, what am I supposed to do? Check her ID? I’m like, Check… check her face. Is it underdeveloped and over-contoured? Does it look like she still believes in Santa?” Stelling’s set is a textbook trip down memory lane, which the comic then turns into reflections on her life now, all of which she delivers with a mix of biting material and raw honesty, precisely landing each punchline. “I might still want kids,” she says. “I just know I won’t have time to come home and let them out.”

Catherine Cohen The Twist …? She’s Gorgeous (2022)

“Look at me!” Catherine Cohen declares and sings at the outset of her special, in case the title was not clear enough. In The Twist …? She’s Gorgeous, Cohen (or her persona) bursts into wonderfully hilarious songs at a moment’s notice. She basks in the audience’s gaze and makes it known. Any personal story she shares contains a spin of self-congratulations. “My ex and I lived together for three years. And we actually kept living together two months after we broke up,” she says. “Which is, of course—say it with me—good for the environment. Oops, I just ran for office. Oops, I just won.” Cohen transitions between stand-up and song are seamless, with each feeding the overall structure and throughlines of the other. One could imagine each part expanded into a show of its own. But together, they make up an engaging, original special. 

Natalie Palamides Nate – A One Man Show (2020)

Natalie Palamides’s show is unlike anything else on this list. Playing a male character named Nate and dressed in drag, Palamides offers a commentary on masculinity, engaging with the audience to explore topics like consent and jealousy. Nate wrestles with an audience member after he spots him with his “ex-girlfriend.” He showers naked before the audience. Shouts out for his best friend until an audience member answers, only to then invite the “friend” on stage and ask to be spanked dry with a towel. He goes on a date with Miss Jackson, his art teacher (and a mannequin) to his own show, and then has a drunken, sexual encounter with her overlooking Niagara falls. It is a tense moment that further complicates the show’s broader exploration of consent. “Is what I did wrong?” he asks the audience, who give a range of quiet answers upon Nate’s insistence. The special does a fantastic job in capturing the general thrill and unease of the room, but most of us can only wonder what it must have been like to witness live such a brilliant, singular performance.