Review of the comic's surprise release of bonus material

It’s the obvious thing to say, but that doesn’t make it less true. Bo Burnham’s so good that the material he casts away is better than most comedians’ gold.

That’s the takeaway from Inside Outtakes, the irresistibly named collection of songs, sketches and snippets that never made the final cut of his seminal lockdown special, Inside.

By necessity, this is even less orderly than the already fragmented original, although both project the image of a restless imagination. Inside was as always as much about Burnham being trapped within his own agitated thoughts than the literal confinement of Covid quarantine, and this carefully curated companion only serves to underline that..

If anything, this is even more self-referential than the first, whether it’s scenes of Burnham noodling around with his instruments or camera equipment as the ideas form, his naval-gazing about  his privilege and rise to fame via YouTube, or the sketches that mock the very notion of comedians as digital content creators.

There’s a spot-on parody of Joe Rogan style podcasts, with loud-mouthed bros complaining that you can’t say anymore, while spoof commercials urge you to buy jeans or peanut butter. It’s as cluttered as the studio space he locked himself in to record this astonishing special.

Burnham kept some new songs up his sleeve too, from quickies about Joe Biden and Jeff Bezos to the mini-masterpiece Chicken, which deconstructs the old ‘why did the chicken cross the road?’ joke to become a bittersweet but ultimately hopeful ballad to ambition.

That’s not something this preternaturally talent comic has ever been short of, and even with these offcuts he cements himself as the voice of an uncertain yet self-aware generation.

• Bo Burnham: Inside Outtakes is available free on YouTube.

Review date: 2 Jun 2022
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett