Netflix Is a Joke is the name of a Netflix comedy festival that was held in Los Angeles from April 28 to May 8. It’s a curious title, because in comedy circles Netflix is indeed a joke — a streaming service that you’d think would be eager to snap up the very best comics around, but that instead, with a couple of famous exceptions (Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais), prefers to present stand-ups whose material ranges from the safely banal to the aggressively PC — Jim Gaffigan, Aziz Ansari, Marc Maron, Patton Oswalt, Hannah Gadsby, Amy Schumer. Among the festival’s offerings is an hour-and-a-half special entitled Bill Burr Presents Friends Who Kill. “Kill,” of course, is used here in the same way that it’s used among comics — to convey the fact that some fellow comedian’s material is so strong that it makes the audiences weep with helpless laughter and sends the competition running for the hills. As it turned out, alas, the “friends” on this show were more likely to make an audience die of boredom.
