Michael McIntyre – review

In the opening sequence of Michael McIntyre's new show, a video portrays him as some sort of machine: a standup Terminator, assembled backstage by hi-tech gadgetry. It's a revealing self-portrait, grimly borne out by a first half in which the primetime king ticks the boxes of all the most predictable observational comedy subjects, and gives them artificial life. The contrast with a lively and more personal act two, however, is striking, and prompts a question about who McIntyre wants to be: a comic who talks in mass-appeal cliches, or about things that actually matter to him?

The first half is below par from a comic who, love him or loathe him, has never been just a hack. Yes, the delivery is a sight to behold: McIntyre hurls himself at the material, never losing his way, always segueing well, funny faces and voices effortlessly deployed. But content-wise, it's like he's running through a checklist of topics that a 15,000-strong audience is most likely to identify with. The Olympics, the Jubilee, online booking, Kindles. The marital material is particularly tired, so much whiskery guff about male untidiness and dwindling romance. It's deeply alienating to sit there, as I did, thinking: this isn't just unfunny, it's untrue.

After the interval, he's a different comic. The inauthentic portrait of married life is exchanged for a truer-seeming account of struggling to entertain his kids during the holidays. Maybe it's that he actually believes this stuff – but the comedy's much sprightlier, as McIntyre parlays the kiddie ditties Thirty Days Hath September and Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes into successive delightful routines. To finish, there's an anecdote about a horrific trip to the dentist, whose anaesthetised hero is hauled across London bloodied, dismayed and slobbering his name inarticulately at bemused medics. It's a minor masterpiece of comic storytelling, against which the first half's cliches look tawdrier than ever.

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