Thomas Maurer [German] is an Austrian stand-up comedian and Out of the Dark is his newest program, a Best of.

Plot:
After the (imagined) melt-down around his divorce (involving drunken appearances on TV shows, a brawl with Daniel Kehlmann and a coke scandal), Thomas Maurer wants to get back on his feet and explain everything that happened. And what better way for a stand-up comedian than to do this in his newest program.

The first part of the show revolves around his showbiz-riffing premise, the second half gets more political. Both halves were very good, but personally, I enjoyed the first one more.

I loved the fake youtube videos he showed us: his drunk appearance on “Was gibt es Neues?” (an Austrian quiz show were celebrity guests have to “guessplain” certain words or concepts), or his (also drunk) appearance in Barbara Rett’s culture show where she interviews Daniel Kehlmann and Thomas Maurer – a last-minute stand-in for Peter Sloterdijk – gets jealous of Kehlmann’s success and the attention he gets and finally starts a fight with him. These videos were really well-made (I honestly thought that I had missed Austrian celebrity gossip, as usual, and that the meltdown was real) and for me the highlight of the evening.

Though I also loved his piece about Kasperle being a huge ass because it’s so true. I never understood why people thought that he was a hero – he’s such a cretin.

Anyway, the program is very enjoyable, even for someone like me who hasn’t seen any of his earlier programs. And if I hadn’t known that this was a best of, I probably wouldn’t have noticed since he ties it together very well.

And even though personally, I didn’t care that much for the political part (because I don’t care that much for political stand-up in general), I did enjoy it, too. Especially when he asked us all to join the far-right party so we could start a revolution from the inside.

Summarising: there should be something for everyone in the program and I can only recommend it.