Dylan Moran: What It Is
(Live in Sydney, 2009)
Moran appears more inclined to make a point than in previous recordings, and consequently less able to do so (his off-the-cuff artillery ceding ground to encroaching vagueness and derailments of thought). When in flow, still a waspishly beleaguered, bildungs-roaming, man-child philosophiser nonpareil.
Dylan Moran: like, totally…
(Live in London, 2006)
Dylan Moran takes to the stage like a recently slimmed, cuddly teddy bear possessed on a whim to explain life’s ineffabilities while at the same time swatting them away and distracting himself with enraptured visions of honey. At his best when extemporising.
Dylan Moran: Monster
(Live in Dublin, April 2004)
Moran is an unprepossessing, boyishly unkempt presence on stage, at once sardonically amused at life and yet vaguely irritated by it, flailing after observational threads and, when sufficiently piqued, latching on to sublimely absurd stream-of-consciousness exemplars, caught and released with rapid-fire insouciance.
Black Books, Series 2
(Channel 4, 2002)
A step-down from the first series but still laugh-out-loud absurd. Bernard’s perpetually sloshed, almost nihilistic ill-temperedness is so extreme that it may have benefited from straighter support characters, rather than the equally ramped-up vagueness of Manny and the hardcore faddishness of Fran.
Black Books, Series 1
(Channel 4, 2000)
Like Monty Python’s ‘Nudge Nudge’ sketch, the scripts for this sitcom would look bafflingly unremarkable. The episodes are defined not by plot but rather a freewheeling melange of comic business and off-the-wall character humour. Dylan Moran’s misanthropic bookshop owner oozes dark charisma.
Dylan Moran: Dr Cosmos
Queensland Performing Arts Centre (5 December 2019)
Irish comedian Dylan Moran was in fine, free-flowing form last night, gilding his societal observations with intelligent and rapid-fire absurdist exemplars while expounding on the generation gap, growing up in Ireland, accepting middle age, and the inherent failings of the male gender.