Netflix's 4 Comedy Documentaries for October, From Martin Mull to Norm Macdonald to SCTV
Netflix is putting out one comedy documentary a week this month. Here's what each one is, and why you should watch the dead and the living alike.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min read
Netflix has decided October is comedy documentary month, which is a kind thing to do for comedians, since most of them won't get a documentary until they're too dead to complain about the lighting. Four films, roughly one a week, about four very different kinds of funny.
Judd Apatow has a hand in two of them. Apatow has by now made films about Garry Shandling and George Carlin, and at this rate a comic who sees him in the back of a club should probably go get a checkup. Here's the slate, in the order it arrives.
- 01
Who Is Martin Mull? (Netflix, Oct. 7)
Directed by Bob Saget and Neil Berkeley, it follows Mull from folk clubs to sitcoms to gallery walls, with Steve Martin, Tom Waits and David Alan Grier along to vouch for him. Mull was the rare man who could be a comedian, a musician and a painter and never once be smug about any of it. Most of us can't manage one of those without telling people at dinner.
- 02
Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald (Netflix, Oct. 16)
Apatow built it from archival footage, photos and home videos, so the former Weekend Update anchor, who died in 2021, gets to tell the story in his own voice. That's the right call. Hiring people to explain Norm Macdonald would be like hiring a band to explain a sunset. We have some fondness for the man around here, so we'll be watching with a pencil.
- 03
Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story (Netflix, Oct. 23)
Apatow and Berkeley followed Bamford for nearly four years, from Duluth to Los Angeles, with clips from her specials and a good deal about her family and her mental health. She's the only one of the four subjects still working, which makes her the only one who can file a complaint about the edit. I'd bet she does it in her mother's voice.
- 04
SCTV: The Greatest Show You've Never Heard Of (Netflix, Oct. 30)
Jason Hehir directs a look at the Canadian sketch show that gave us John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short, with a reunion in Toronto. Netflix is also putting the whole series up the same day, so you can watch the documentary and then check its work. Few shows have been this influential while being this little-watched, a condition Canadians call modesty and Americans call bad marketing.