While the other UK-based comedians in the new Netflix Comedians of the World series have drawn heavily on old touring shows, much of Ellie Taylor's material is clearly bang up to date. She is heavily pregnant and given that a big chunk of her set is about giving birth I doubt if she was doing these gags a year ago.
A lot of the subjects come from a fairly conventional tick-list of baby issues. Crazy hormones, pelvic floors, resisting both Pino and Grigio and planning the conception with boring military efficiency all figure strongly. Stories often end on a verbal punchline and then a visual act-out too. A lot of comics do this nowadays. Taylor's style in which she almost holds a cartoonish pose so that the audience can snap her is most redolent of Alan Carr.
The physicality helps to make familiar stories stand out. As well as the chat about impending motherhood the Mash Report reporter spends a fair chunk of the rest of her set talking about relationships and sex. She is no Sarah Silverman but Taylor seems much more unhibited here than in past shows. She mourns that she was never promiscuous and never had a "hoedown" - she tried to loosen up but the first man she flirted with ended up being the one she married.
Cravings – the title refers to all sorts of things she mentions and not just to those raging mum-hormones – is an interesting show because of all the UK comics I've watched in this Netflix series Taylor seems to have adapted her act the most to be more international. I don't think she referred to going on "vacation" when I saw her in Greenwich last year. She also says "sidewalk" although maybe it still feels odd to her because in the next sentence she reverts to "pavement".
She is pretty universal already though. Taylor is very much the most mainstream of the current batch of Netflix releases from UK comics, but there is nothing wrong with that. This is the sort of show you can come home to after a date night, kick off your heels (or your shoes), crack open a Pinot and a Grigio and enjoy.
Watch on Netflix now.
