Comedians Of The World –  Tumi Morake: (Un)Domestic Issues | Netflix special reviewed by Steve Bennett
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Comedians Of The World – Tumi Morake: (Un)Domestic Issues

Note: This review is from 2019

Netflix special reviewed by Steve Bennett

Like many comedians in this series, Tumi Morake opens by saying how happy she is to be at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, where a lot of the specials were filmed. But few show it quite so explicitly as she does.

She’s easy with her own laughs, spreading an infectious joie de vivre as she teases the audiences that she was the recipient of their charity dollars sent to Africa.

Her good spirits come at the expense of some focus, however, and it takes a while for her to hit her stride with the material. Talking about all the steps in Edinburgh barely feels relevant here, and her self-deprecating talk of feeling fat and droopy after having three kids is a bit behind the zeitgeist that Hannah Gadsby upended. Speaking of which, she mentions that America ‘doesn’t send us Jay Z and Beyoncé’, who of course played Johannesburg last month.

Still, Morake has some pleasing turns of phrase – her description of a tattooed rapper certainly hits the spot – and once she eases into the personal storytelling segments of the half-hour she proves engrossing and entertaining, if not overly fussed about crafting the perfect punchline.

Morake speaks amusingly of how she’s so fertile she even gets pregnant on the pill, shares her unconventional parenting techniques (and puts a post-colonial spin on diktats that it’s wrong to hit your kids), while proclaiming a sort-of acceptance of her husband’s cheating. All interesting stuff from an on-stage livewire.

• Comedians Of The World –  Tumi Morake: (Un)Domestic Affairs is available on Netflix now. Watch here.

Review date: 12 Jan 2019
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

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