5 Clean Comedy Specials for Thanksgiving, From Brian Regan to Nate Bargatze's New Hour
Your family is coming over, and somebody's grandmother will be on the couch. Here are five stand-up hours that won't get the remote taken away.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Thanksgiving is the one day a year when Americans gather a dozen people who disagree about everything, feed them until they can't stand, and then ask them to agree on what to watch. It's how the Pilgrims did it, more or less, except the Pilgrims had nothing to stream, which may be why they look so serious in every painting.
The safest choice is a clean comic. Not a children's act, mind you, just a grown man or woman who can be funny for an hour without making your aunt put her fork down. It's a rarer gift than it sounds. Any fool can get a laugh with a dirty word; it takes a craftsman to get one with a buffet. Here are five hours that pass the grandmother test, including one arriving just before the turkey. A clean joke is like a good gravy: nobody notices it until it's missing.
- 01
Nate Bargatze: Good for Nathan (Netflix, Nov. 24, 2026)
Bargatze's fourth Netflix hour, taped over two shows at Fort Worth's Dickies Arena in June, lands two days before Thanksgiving. Netflix says it covers fitness trackers, smart stoves and the miracle of food delivery, and it follows a tour that set the Guinness record for most tickets sold for a stand-up tour. He is the only man in America who can sell two million tickets by sounding like he just woke up from a nap.
- 02
Nate Bargatze: Your Friend, Nate Bargatze (Netflix, 2024)
If Good for Nathan isn't out by the time the pie is, start with this one. It premiered on Christmas Eve 2024 as the first special in his last Netflix deal. It is the comedy equivalent of a pair of slippers, and nobody has ever been offended by slippers.
- 03
Brian Regan: Nunchucks and Flamethrowers (Netflix, 2017)
Regan's first Netflix special, released in late November 2017, and still the gold standard for comedy you can watch with a priest. He works without profanity, and has said the clean label is beside the point, which is the sort of thing only a man who's never needed a curse word would say. Regan does more with a confused face than most comics do with a microphone.
- 04
Jim Gaffigan: The Skinny (Hulu, 2024)
Gaffigan's 11th hour premiered on Hulu on Nov. 22, 2024, as the first special in the streamer's Hularious brand. Reviewers called it mostly clean, with a few mild swears and no F-bombs, though it does get into alcohol and appetite suppressants. A man who spent 20 years joking about food has now made an hour about eating less of it, and the holiday is the right time to watch him suffer.
- 05
Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill (Netflix, 2020)
Taped during Seinfeld's Beacon Theatre residency in New York and released May 5, 2020, it's rated TV-14 and spends its hour on texting, buffets and Pop-Tarts. That makes it the cleanest thing a billionaire has done in public in years. Put it on after dinner and your uncle will explain that he thought of the Pop-Tart joke first.