Being the biggest English-speaking comedian in India seems like both blessing and curse, for precisely the same reason. Standing out as an outspoken stand-up puts a political target on Vir Das‘s back. He’s mentioned in previous Netflix specials how it has gotten him into hot water, and here, he’s facing a different kind of persecution, as well as an unexpected physical setback. Will he prevail? Doesn’t he always?
The Gist: Over the course of a week, Das filmed his sixth Netflix special across three continents; first at the 900-seat Union Chapel in London; two days later, in the round at the 5,000 NSCI Stadium in Mumbai; and two days after that, in the intimate basement confines of the Comedy Cellar in New York City.
And as he explains (with documentary footage spliced throughout), Das felt he had to rewrite much of this special in the six weeks before all of this, after having lost his voice, not knowing whether he’d be able to joke about anything. No spoilers, because of course he’s here joking for the full hour-plus, not just about his vocal struggles but also about his foolish escapades in his youth, and his various encounters with law enforcement in India.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: In form and structure, it’s clearly following the model of Chris Rock’s epic 2008 special, Kill The Messenger, which Rock filmed cutting his hour across three shows and three continents. Rock and Das overlap on two cities (London and NYC), splitting the third continent, with Rock choosing a Johannesburg casino to Das’s homeland choice of Mumbai.
Memorable Jokes: The story about his vocal recovery includes a reference to Adele as well as a prop in a kazoo, with which Adele’s former vocal therapist had instructed him to play “Happy Birthday” on to ensure he could perform in theaters again.
Since he obviously could, there’s a bit less drama in retrospect, although through it all, he does get off a funny line about his own career: “I never want to embarrass India abroad unless it’s at a large theatre.”
Das claims that Generation Z kids and younger, addicted to the Internet, try to pass themselves off as various personality brands, when really, as you get older, you may realize as he has that there are only two types of people: a-holes, and people who deal with a-holes. Which one is Das, though? His bit about being 18 tripping on acid on the back of a friend’s motorbike in Delhi suggests he used to be the former. His encounter at almost twice that age with a fellow “Tunak Tunak” dancer in a Mumbai nightclub suggested he had begun to segue to the latter.
At one point he jokingly suggests differences between sympathy and empathy in frank sexual imagery. At another he posits his idea for gun reform in America, which would require you to say the full text of the Second Amendment before your gun could fire a shot.
But these asides seem trifling compared to the stories he tells about himself, whether it’s when he was working in a Chicago restaurant as an illegal alien at 24, learning how delicately-placed bags of soup could keep him from freezing on the elevated trains overnight; or whether he’s recounting an incident with a police officer in India trying to explain how he couldn’t possibly steal a joke from himself and get in trouble for it.
Our Take: Alas, midway through 2025, there still remain stark differences in the rights to free speech here in America versus India.
And Das recounts how even his decision to tell jokes in English cuts against him, for better and worse. Why? “White validation is brown kryptonite,” he jokes.
But he has the last laugh when a popular unnamed Hindi comedian complained that Das couldn’t be a relatable stand-up if he joked in English, only for that guy to drive off in a Range Rover. Das’s haters may say: “Just make me laugh, bro, don’t make me think.” And yet Das excels at both. In this hour, he even has some of his references show up onscreen lest we think too hard about what “mama” means in context, or the name of the diamond England stole from India, or even that AQI stands for air quality index.
In a previous special, Das joked with sand under his feet the entire time, waiting for a big reveal. For this hour, he stands with a lamppost beside him onstage, and even that goes out for a brief period as Das asks us to focus on our sounds. As long as he can stand it, though, he hopes to be that beacon of hope. And light. And even foolishness.
Our Call: STREAM IT. “Silence is happiness and happiness is silence,” Das jokes in explaining a conventional bit of Indian wisdom. And yet he seems happiest here when he takes a moment to revel in the fact that his voice has fully recovered, channelling Freddie Mercury’s “Live Aid” call-and-response, only with a bit of Indian slang.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.