Roast comedy works around a fascinatingly self-referential format. The roast is the roast because it claims to be the roast.
It is a format I have always watched, from classic Dean Martin roasts to the inimitable Don Rickles putting his friends through the wringer, to its mostly middling current incarnation, because amid predictable and easy gags, occasionally someone rises to the top with outstanding material. At Netflix’s The Roast Of Tom Brady two years ago, comedian Nikki Glaser killed so hard that she was catapulted into higher visibility gigs, like hosting the Golden Globes and the Time 100.
She, therefore, instantly became too good for Netflix’s latest live event The Roast Of Kevin Hart. Aired this week, this is distinctly unmemorable TV and while I would really love my 3 hours back, watching it did make me realise how much Netflix celebrates nothingness. The Netflix “live event” is so calculated to appeal to as many demographics as possible that it doesn’t leave room to hold anything artful or meaningful or even vaguely interesting. Like the unnecessary Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson “prizefight”, this was yet another non-event pretending to be a big deal.
Netflix, now also the home of Wrestlemania, appears to believe that playing make-believe loudly enough is almost as good as genuine excitement.
The modern Roast format—as popularised on Comedy Central, where targets ranged from David Hasselhoff to a certain Donald Trump—is ideal for this, because part of the joke is that audiences aren’t supposed to know all of the roasters. “Who are these idiots?” is a regular refrain from those taking the podium and running down lesser known names on the dais. This allows Netflix to throw in someone for every demo. Someone obscure, someone old, someone borrowed, someone bold.
The roasters are the roasters because we’re told they are.
The biggest dampener was the bland host, Shane Gillis, who kept complaining about the audience for not laughing at his jokes. “That was the best one,” he often informed, after a gag got a lukewarm response, and kept promising brutality that never arrived. Keeping an evening of insults on track is a tough gig, and longtime roastmaster Jeff Ross showed up—in Eddie Murphy’s red leather get-up, complete with Beverly Hills Cop music—to show us how it’s done.
Ross mocked Hart for his height, saying “the world first fell in love with you when Michael Jackson dangled you off that balcony.” It’s a theme everyone used, but Ross punctuated his zingers with theme music, raising the energy, and hitting his punchlines with flair. “Your dad was a street hustler and addicted to crack cocaine, so I guess being dependent on the rock runs in the family,” he said, referring to Hart’s box- office partnership and bromance with The Rock.
He then turned to Kill Tony host Tony Hinchcliffe—a right-wing comedian who had opened for a Donald Trump rally in 2024—that he had it “up to here with his politics,” raising his hand like a Nazi salute.
This brings us to the evening’s purported edginess. Gillis called Chelsea Handler a Zionist and mentioned how she had dined with Jeffrey Epstein. Handler, in turn, told Hinchcliffe that he had “the face of a school shooter and the personality of someone who gets shot first.” Even The Rock, who invariably showed up with WWE-style fanfare, took a shot at Tony, calling him a “little sassy bigot”. All while Netflix head Ted Sarandos guffawed from the audience, proclaiming himself the king of free speech as everyone can say what they want on his streamer.
Except every insult was walked back. Whenever a zinger landed hard, the deliverer of the gag would either chastise themselves for having gone too far, or tell the target that they loved them. The attempt, clearly, was to show that diametrically varied voices can coexist on a comedic stage, and that these people with differing lives and politics can be friends, but it smacked of disingenuity. It felt too stage-managed, like everyone in the room was afraid to genuinely offend, to go too far, to burn a bridge or risk a potential endorsement.
The roasters who did well were Hart’s writer Na’im Lynn, with the sharpest lines, and the musician Lizzo who, infectiously, laughed so hard she could barely read the jokes off the teleprompter. The true highlight was the appearance of Katt Williams, the legendary comedian Hart has feuded with for years and years. “That’s how little star power you have,” Williams told Hart. “They had to start inviting your enemies. I said ‘I hate him’. They said, ‘Come anyway’.” Williams didn’t walk back his potshots, and they immediately rang truer. “Just because Kevin went to Diddy parties does not mean he did something wrong,” Williams continued. “The fact that he gets all quiet when you bring it up, that means he did something wrong.”
A true star will shine through the barbecue sauce of nothingness. Hart tried to fire back at the end, but he is more shrill than funny. Netflix tried for a bona fide icon, Sir Paul McCartney, who turned them down. So The Roast Of Kevin Hart feels more like a dry-run than a benediction. Hart is hugely successful, largely because of franchises shouldered by The Rock. The question, therefore, is not whether we will someday see ‘The Roast Of The Rock’. The question is whether it’ll get him elected President.
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Insult comedy has never been as much fun as in Mean Girls, the 2004 high-school comedy written by Tina Fey, a film where the girls have a secret compendium of insults (a “burn book”) and where the popular girls announce that the others can’t sit with them.
Raja Sen is a critic, screenwriter and columnist. His first play, a murder mystery called The Simla Affair, recently opened in Delhi. He is currently writing a horror film.