Natural Born Killer (which will now be referred to as NBK) was Jimmy’s 4th Netflix special and was released April 16th 2024.
It had been filmed in Aylesbury, England at The Waterside Theatre on September 28th and 29th 2023. There were 2 shows each night and all were filmed, to gather the footage.
On release, once again, some of the criticism was that the audience faces were not shown and that that was proof, somehow, that no one was there and it was a laugh track.
I covered this same critique under His Dark Material (HDM) 2021 (here). HDM also was recorded across more than 1 show and this means that showing the audience would bring continuity issues. See under the section, on that post, for “The 2 Southend Shows…”
After the special was published on Netflix it signalled the end of Terribly Funny 2.0 (the tour which supplied the content for the show) and he immediately moved on, with all new material, as the Laughs Funny tour.
- Written and performed by: Jimmy Carr
- Directors: Jimmy Carr and Brian Klein
Jimmy took the role of Director for the 1st time and set the lighting to be a different colour, to signify changes in the segments of the show. Looks stunning, once you notice it.
Feedback
If you’ll excuse the word we were about at full speed “woke” at this point and posts on places like X were very vocal about how Jimmy wasn’t funny, his career was on the slide, you shouldn’t be telling jokes about that topic – yada yada. I would summarise it as anyone who had ever been upset by, for example, the vaccine joke in HDM (or any number of other jokes) took the chance to stick the boot in.
Newer fans loved NBK but the Reddit type crowd were doing the old “I’ve said funnier on 4Chan”. All I would say to that is – if you think it’s so easy – go to an open mic and give it a go.
If I could offer one criticism of this special is that it was a bit of a slow burn in the first half. I’m a fan of one liner comedy but Jimmy has been working with Amanda Baker for a couple of years (on improving his performance skills) and started delivering to 92 bpm. Having been a fan for soooooooooo many years I find, with slower delivery, that my brain starts trying to compute what the upcoming punchline may be. It’s precisely why I can only listen to Anthony Jeselnik on double speed.
BUT. The 2nd half had some incredibly well thought out longer routines in it about his son’s premature birth, date rape and giving advice on consent rules by use of a young volunteer from the audience. More credit should be given for this content and it proved that he CAN do longer form work and yet still be authentic. These pieces are in videos further down this post.
As ever, though, comedy is subjective. He may not be to your taste – but I’d heartily recommend trying the longer form stuff, below.
Netflix Charts by Country
The official Netflix charts (as I’ve already talked about in this post) were odd in that the week of 15-21 April 2024 they showed NBK as being Top 10 in 23 countries. Using other traffic websites and my VPN I think it was actually 28. With Portugal becoming number 29 the following week.
The “29” on the country list (Top 10) were:
Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, UAE, UK, USA
The countries where it was Top 5 were:
Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, UK, USA
NBK Views
Between April and Dec 2024, NBK had 4.7m views – plus another 500,000 in Jan-June 2025. Bringing its total to 5.2m.
By comparison HDM (released on Christmas Day 2021) had picked up 3.2m views by end of June 2025.
Two million more views in a much shorter timeframe. I’d say that was excellent progress.
Promotional shoot
@mattfrost.me did a cracking photoshoot, above, so I’m assuming the copyright of the image below would be his too.
Below is a billboard in Times Square, New York City. Considering how much of a Starbucks addict Jimmy is – seeing the store under the billboard made me smirk.
NBK Video Clips
Don’t forget to take note of the lighting in these clips!!!
Some of the one liner gags from NBK – including one with a good spiel about how “date rape” should be called RAPE. His feminist side showing.
Jimmy’s “I’M SORRY” joke, about what he’s going to say the next time he’s cancelled (referencing back to, amongst other things, the attempts to have him removed from Netflix etc. after the HDM special).
Birth of Jimmy’s son. In a big move away from his “one liner” love language the 2nd half of this special had a lot more longer format stories. This one was about the premature birth of his first child.
I’m a father now…referencing “kids” in the plural (couple of times within the special) as him and Karoline had added a daughter to their family (between him writing the above routine and the recording date).
Advice to young men – both on the tour and after the special this routine was very much praised by parents and deserved more attention. A 5-minute lesson on young men getting consent from young girls.
Veganism, woman who thought a ghost was having sex with her in her dreams, only 15% of rapes reported (same as the one above) and pronouns.
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