The Melancholy Brilliance of Louis CK and Stewart Lee

Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten/
Daß ich so traurig bin...*

So says Heinrich Heine in his poem the Lorelei. Heine was a Romantic poet and later this kind of melancholy feeling so prevalent among the German Romantics became known as Weltschmertz. It is sadness that comes not for any specific reason but merely from being alive itself. Schopenhauer thought there were 2 ways out from underneath this sadness and those were 1) suicide 2) some kind of redemption through creative art. Samuel Beckett is the twentieth century artist who embraced Schopenhauer’s pessimissim to its fullest extent, but weaving in too existentialist notions of the absurd and a very dry despairing Irish sense of humour. 

It seems to me that both the American comic Louis CK and the English comedian Stewart Lee have also embraced Samuel Beckett’s worldview in their latest TV programmes. Stewart Lee’s most recent series which just finished on the BBC comprises 6 half an hour episodes divied up into 3 elements: 20 minutes of bleak, minimalistic, intelligent standup about the travails of being a tubby middle aged man with two kids in a major metropolitan city i.e. London; an often surrealistic filmed piece that somehow captures the central motif of that week’s show and finally a comedic jabbing rebuttal to everything that Lee posits in the show - in the first two series this rebuttal was done by Armando Ianucci (he of The Thick of It and Veep) and in the latest series it was done by dark comic legend Chris Morris (he of The Day Today, Brass Eye, 4 Lions and also Veep). 

Louis CK’s new series Louie which began on Monday comprises about 6 minutes of bleak, minimalistic, intelligent, standup about the travails of being a tubby middle aged man with two kids in a major metropolitan city i.e. New York, plus an extended 20 minute filmed piece on that night’s theme. I’ve written about CK’s show before here on the blog many times. Suffice to say that I think its one of the very best things on American TV at the moment. IT IS NOT A SITCOM or a comedy show. Do not watch it expecting laughs. It’s a despairing look at the life of an overweight 46 year old man struggling to make it in his chosen profession and coping with raising two daughters in our overstimulated modern world (this is a subject I can 100% identify with). There are moments of black humour in Louie but that’s not the point of the show. Louis CK, like Stewart Lee isn’t really in it for the laughs, or at least, he’s not just in it for the laughs. Like Beckett and Pinter CK wants to understand the sadness and see if there’s a way through it that doesn’t involve Schopenhauer’s solution #1. 

Both series Louie and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle come highly recommended from me. But please don’t watch them looking for light relief. They’re not that kind of show. Louie S4 E2 was particularly grim I thought, but with just the perfect glint of light at the very end. I am a fan of both Lee and CK. Lee is very English and CK is very American and although they both plough the same furrow to like both of them is a little bit like being a fan of both cricket and baseball. (Which, in fact, I am.)

*Trans: I do not know what this can mean - I am so very sad. (Its better in the German).

Louie S4 E12

the great David Lynch and the great Louis CK, if only Werner Herzog
were in there too I'd be in some kind of fanboy heaven...

A couple of posts ago I was talking about English comic Stewart Lee who is virtually unknown in America, in this post I'd like to talk about Louis CK who is virtually unknown in the UK and whats interesting about that is the fact that Louis CK is a kind of American Stewart Lee and Stewart Lee is a bit like a British Louis CK. Lee does more politics than CK but both Lee and CK approach comedy with an honesty, intelligence, dryness and patience that other comedians do not. Both Louis CK and Stewart Lee consider stand up comedy to be an artform and an artform that takes a lot of work and practice. Both dislike "hacks" who put forward cheesy old fashioned material that pleases big crowds and both Louis CK and Stewart Lee have seen much of their material ripped off by more successful "hack" comics (Dane Cook in CK's case, innumerable British comics in Lee's case). Both also in the last couple of years have finally had a measure of TV success after decades on the fringes of wider recognition. 
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Louis CK's sitcom Louie which has been running on FX shouldnt really call itself a sitcom at all, its more of a 30 minute drama about a comedian with the occasional laugh thrown in. Dont get me wrong, its good, its very good but its not a barrel of laughs. My better half went to high school with Louis CK and she remembers him as smart and witty but not particularly funny and thats my impression of the show too. More wry than funny. But I like that. People who dont get Stewart Lee make a similar complaint, yes he's clever, but he doesn't deliver the belly laughs. That said the last three episodes of Louie have been the strangest and best of a rather patchy season. Cameos abound in the three episode arc Late Show pts 1,2,3 where Louis CK is offered David Letterman's job by a rather sinister Gary Marshall after a killer appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Louie is hounded for the job by Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, warned off by Leno and finally sent for training at a cockamamie "hosting school" run by David Lynch. Lynch is playing a version of the character he created for himself on Twin Peaks and as you'd expect from a Lynch-CK collaboration it is surreal and actually quite brilliant. The arc follows a predictable but enjoyable course: Lynch coaches Louis into becoming an acceptable late night host and with the endorsement of his two daughters Louis delivers a great trial show telling guest Susan Sarandon a very funny (and very common I suspect) story about how Louis processed his first encounter with her when he saw her on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wont tell you how the episode turns out but I thought the ending was a perfect showcase of Hollywood duplicity...
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Louie S4, E 10, E11, E12 Grade A 

Louie S2 E11

CK in Iraq

Until yesterday I hadn't previously watched any of Louie, Louis CK's sitcom on FX. I had seen CK's old sitcom on HBO and was not impressed - that show was damp and weird with very few laughs. But I do find CK funny and on an impulse I decided to check out a random episode of his new show: S2 E11. And I have to say that this time I was impressed. It was funny, well made with great production values (except maybe the Hueys pretending to be Blackhawks) and surprisingly affecting. The episode is partially based on the story of CK's USO tour that he wrote about beautifully on his blog, here and also partially based on a story that his 9 year old year old daughter suggested to him. 
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The show is a little like Seinfeld in that it is centred around CK's real life as a comedian living in New York, but it is not at all Seinfeldian. It's a single camera show with no laugh track and every episode written and directed by CK. It's a darker programme than Seinfeld which was pretty dark for its time. In real life CK is divorced and the father of two girls aged 5 and 9 and much of his humour is about being newly single, overweight, depressed and angry. 
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Louie gets lowish ratings but the cast is small, everyone works for close to scale and the show is cheap to make. I hope Louie runs for years as I've seen a couple more episodes now and they were also very good. I may, however, be precisely the target audience: Louis CK is exactly my age, approximately my build and I also have two daughters aged 5 and 9; we're both writers, Louis CK went to high school in Boston with my wife Leah and I'm also more than a little ticked off at the state of the world. But even if you're none of these things you should still check out his show. Actually read his blog post first about his USO tour and then watch the episode and I think you'll enjoy it even more.