Netflix

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Comedy 

REVIEW: Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun

Matt Caton 0 Comments , ,

Australia’s silliest duffers, Aunty Donna, are currently conquering the world with their new Netflix special, Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun. 

We don’t really do reviews here at Holding Steadfast anymore, but when I saw this pop up on Netflix, I knew I was going to have to dust off my thesaurus and my pretentious ‘reviewer’ glasses, and write this one up. If you haven’t heard of Aunty Donna before, well then brace yourself… you are going to hear a lot about them in the coming months.

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REVIEW: Black Mirror – Season 3

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Television 

REVIEW: Black Mirror – Season 3

Matt Caton 0 Comments , ,

***Spoiler free review

Charlie Brooker’s dark and eminently bleak speculative fiction series Black Mirror, gets the more polished Netflix treatment, with some mixed results. 

The first two seasons of Black Mirror contain some of the most uncomfortable and difficult stories I’ve ever seen on television, both in the good and the not-so-good way. In a similar vein to the legendary The Twlight Zone, the show takes a rather ruthless look at modern society, through the lense of unforeseen consequences of our modern technology. Each episode is a stand-alone chapter, with a new story and new actors, and while each of the topics examined here is pure fiction, they leave just enough connection to our current reality to make you feel a little creeped out by it. Or sometimes, a great deal creeped out by it.

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REVIEW: Joe Rogan – Triggered

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Comedy 

REVIEW: Joe Rogan – Triggered

Matt Caton 1 Comment , , ,
UFC commentator and podcast pioneer Joe Rogan reminds everybody how he got so famous in the first place, with his hilarious new Netflix Comedy special Triggered.

Regular readers of this site would know that I’m a pretty big fan of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. In fact, ‘pretty big fan’ is probably playing it down a fair bit. Yet, if I’m asked to rattle off a list of my favourite stand-up comedians, or asked to rank comedians in any way (I’m not sure who is asking me to do these things, but still), Rogan’s name rarely makes the list. It seems I underrate and undervalue his stand-up abilities, and when one takes a look at his back catalog of work, this is completely unfair with no real basis behind it.

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The Streaming Wars
Television 

The Streaming Wars

Matt Caton 0 Comments , , ,
Netflix vs. Stan vs. Presto. We run our eye over Australia’s ‘Big 3’ streaming services

The exciting and genre-changing new world of streaming television has officially been available in Australia since early 2015, which when you think about it, isn’t that long at all. Yet in the world of digital media and mobile apps, 18 months can be an entire product lifecycle. 18 months, can see a modern tech company rise, fall, be superseded, be acquired by somebody else and get a new branding makeover. So how have the domestic streaming products held up in their short (but long) life thus far? Are we getting anything close to the service that international viewers get? Have our domestic products come close to competing with the superpower of Netflix?

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REVIEW: Jim Jefferies – Freedumb

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Comedy 

REVIEW: Jim Jefferies – Freedumb

Matt Caton 1 Comment , ,
Freedumb sees Australia’s greatest stand-up comedy export Jim Jefferies return to Netflix, to tell all the people who were offended by his famous gun routine, to fuck off.

Since the last time Jim Jefferies did a Netflix special, his fame has risen quite a few notches. Before his last special Bare hit Netflix, Jim was a world renowned star in comedy circles, but he had very little recognition elsewhere. Once Bare was released, and Jim’s opinions on gun control (and women) went extraordinarily viral, he became known by people from all walks of life, and as he explains in this special, that hasn’t always been good fun.

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6 of the Best ‘Just For Netflix’ Comedy Specials

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Comedy 

6 of the Best ‘Just For Netflix’ Comedy Specials

Matt Caton 0 Comments , , , , , , ,

Netflix gets plenty of credit for redefining how and when we consume our television, but it’s also been instrumental in creating better access to stand-up comedy, particularly for international viewers. Aside from providing a substantial back catalogue of Comedy Central and independent specials, they’ve also found success in producing their own original exclusive content, and most of the comedy world’s biggest names have gotten on board.

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Jimmy Carr

Image: Netflix

Comedy 

REVIEW: Jimmy Carr – Funny Business

Matt Caton 3 Comments , ,
Jimmy Carr treads the fine line between being offensive, and being really, really offensive in his new Netflix special, Jimmy Carr: Funny Business.

Jimmy Carr is a familiar name in British Comedy, with regular appearances on television panel shows and an impressive 9 DVD specials, which made it no surprise that he was the first British comedian to film a ‘just-for-Netflix’ comedy special.

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