Improv4Humans is several things: a fully improvised and scene based comedy podcast; a show usually involving four humans; aimed for a human audience. Oh, and did I mention it’s basically the most hilarious podcast out there? Well it is. One of the best shows on the Earwolf network, Matt Besser leads this particular podcast with a love that veers toward the obscene, with a talent that is blinding and a hand that almost always steers in the right direction. Mining suggestions from twitter, anecdotes from their lives, or some of the weirdest videos youtube has to offer, Besser and three other humans improvise unremittingly hilarious sketches that are always surprising and never end up quite how you’d expect.
Mr. Matt Besser
Of all the glories podcasts offer, the one thing that really lacks is truly active hilarity. Shows that exceed the minimum of simply entertaining, reducing your body to a shuddering mass of bones, snorts and desperately stifled laughter are very much few and far between. For all the comedians on show, whose stand-up is often very impressive, it turns out that most often it is the lesser heralded writers and improvisers that offer the truest comedy in podcast county. And it is into this category that Improv4Humans falls, as one of the limited number of major podcasts that actually guarantees consistently brain-mashing laughter, with Matt Besser right at the heart of the action. Now, if I were to list my favourite people in comedy, the performers who are most impressive, creative and astoundingly hilarious, Mr Besser is right in the upper echelons of such a list. His sense of humour hits so perfectly, with such a joyous approach to improv, such a ridiculously affectionate pursuit of the ludicrous and a genuine comedy worldview that makes him not only a comic personality but a genuine comedian as well.The way he elegantly transforms mundane scenes into exceptional ideas, the way he adapts to his fellow humans when they improvise together, even the way he backgrounds himself when the time calls for it proves that, for me, Besser is a real comedy genius. And amongst all my endless gushing and love of an over-emphatic adjective, genius is the one term I use least loosely, yet is one that Besser absolutely deserves.
Time Meadows, John Gemberling, Besser and Joe Wengert at the after show
This would be clear from his work with the UCB, having established some of the finest comedy clubs in America, his insatiable appetite for improv or even those times where you see him pop up on various sitcoms for three minutes; but maybe Improv4Humans is a format that channels this vivacity at it’s fullest. His approach to improv fully in sync with his comic understanding, he doesn’t over-eagerly seek the big laughs, as he knows they are just an inevitability, a simple result of he and his co-contributors excellence. The leaps into profanity or hilarious toilet humour are full-blooded and hardly unusually, but are not the end game of the show, as they are used to endlessly heighten the comedy, used in ways that are artistic, creative and enthusiastic. But as well as his individual skills, he has a fantastic eye for other great improvisers that glows through in the joint chemistry of the groups, shining brightest in longer form improvisation on the show. This ability to curate is of course influenced by his comic understanding, but also displays his awareness and desire to make the show as hilarious as he possibly can. The comedians aren’t the same stale eight or nine rotating around each month, instead Besser finds new people to offer a fresh dynamic and a different perspective. And this is the truest joy of the show. It’s synchronisation of blistering comedy, combined with a co-operative dynamic that is forever scaling the comedy to ever greater levels of tension and giddiness that all the improvisers keep up with amazingly. Retaining it’s freshness through a constant seam of new blood and this unerring ear for great improvisers, that means somehow, without seeming to ever really make any great changes, it manages to get funnier and funnier by the week.
An utterly exceptional podcast that even I cannot over-emphasise, Improv4Humans is a heroic entry in the podcast market. Brutally funny, relentlessly excellent and thoroughly brilliant, Besser has crafted a show that is more than merely ‘suggested’ listening, making something that is altogether more ‘necessary,’ and you could never compliment him enough for this.
You can find the show on iTunes or over on the Earwolf website, whilst it’s host resides @MattBesser on the twitter.