Everybody everywhere enjoys laughter. That's why they say it is the best medicine, though I have heard that antibiotics are pretty good too. The universal popularity of humor is why we see so many comedies on our screens, whether made by film companies, TV channels or TikTokers notching up multi-millions of views.
The new Korean Netflix series Comedy Revenge takes the idea that we love laughing and puts it into a six-part reality-TV-slash-game-show. Following on from the previous hit Comedy Royale, six teams of three top comedians take each other on for bragging rights and to be crowned comedy champions.
It's a fairly straightforward set-up as we watch them compete in different genres —roasting, improvisation and character comedy. The atmosphere is ramped up with quick cuts, trailers of what's coming later and shots of some very excited open-mouthed audience members that make Britain's Got Talent fans seemed restrained.
What it tells us, however, is that while comedy might be universal, we don't all laugh at the same things and some things can be lost in translation. At times while watching Comedy Revenge I found myself craving for an episode of Live at the Apollo. While I do enjoy seeing comedians going out of their comfort zone, hello Taskmaster, sometimes I just like to see a stand-up standing up onstage and telling high-quality jokes.
![Comedy Revenge | Official Trailer | Netflix [ENG SUB] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/RSXPdrPNma4/maxresdefault.jpg)
First up on Comedy Revenge, for example, is a round in which the teams roast each other. Marks are dished out by the viewers in the studio and proceedings are presided over by Korean comedy legend Lee Kyung-kyu, who won Comedy Royale.
If you’ve watched Roast Battle on Comedy Central or seen some classic American Roasts such as Joan Rivers on the receiving end of the sort of brutal barbs she used to dish out herself, you might be expecting the same. Instead, you get a young comedian berating an older one for making him write his scripts when he was a student. True, maybe, but hardly lacerating.
The roast round underlines that humor is different around the world. I thought the country that gave us Squid Game might be ruthless when it came to insults but punches are pulled when I'd like to have seen some knockout blows.
Other jokes go for the obvious, such as telling an older comic to hurry up and die, and asking the slightly overweight performer if he needs a tow truck to pick him up when he falls over. There isn't much here to make you gasp in the way that Gilbert Gottfried made a joke about 9/11 two weeks after the Twin Towers were destroyed at the roast of Playboy boss Hugh Hefner.
Maybe I should have guessed that the comedy was going to be childish when one of the biggest laughs in the studio early on was seeing Lee Kyung-kyu entering on a tricycle. There is absolutely nothing wrong with childish humor, of course. But UK viewers won't know Lee Kyung-kyu. If it had been Vic Reeves on a tricycle I'd have been in stitches.
Interestingly Comedy Revenge has started streaming shortly after the line-up was announced for another series that pits comics against each other, LOL: Last One Laughing UK, which comes to Prime Video in 2025. This is the hit format that originated in Japan under the title Documental, where comedians gather in a Big Brother-style house and are evicted if they giggle.
The line-up of the UK edition is about as starry as you can get. It features Jimmy Carr as host and contestants including Bob Mortimer, Rob Beckett and Sara Pascoe. The series has been a hit around the world, but the only version I've seen, featuring Irish stand-ups, was about as flat as a week-old pint of Guinness.
I'd love to see Mortimer, Beckett and Pascoe in a version of Comedy Revenge. According to the makers the contestants here are stars in their own country either on TV or online. The theory should be that the more comedians you feature, the funnier the show is, but that doesn't really work if the viewer doesn't know them.
However, if you stick with Comedy Revenge it does improve. After a lively round of improvisation, the finale gives everyone a chance to triumph by coming up with the best character. Performers dress as sea creatures, or soldiers or pretend to be desperate for the toilet while dancing to Bizet. One comes on as a giant thumb.
This is certainly surreal if not always hilarious. The sight of a giant thumb trying to insert a fellow comedian's hand into a third comedian's bottom might not be the funniest thing you will see this year, but it does give you an insight into the kind of things that make Koreans laugh. And to be honest, this single moment made me laugh more than anything I've ever seen in Mrs Brown's Boys.
