Chris McCausland riffs at the start of Speaky Blinder on the time that has elapsed since he wrote the show, and about how this and that hypothetical joke have not aged well. The period in question is a few pandemic-interrupted years but you could believe it was decades, such is the old-school (indulgent viewers might say timeless) character of his comedy. McCausland casts himself as a down-to-earth scouse dad unpersuaded by modernity. Hummus, the gym, new-fangled approaches to childbirth – all are cheerfully mocked by the 44-year-old. Because “it’s my job to moan, isn’t it?”, as he tells us in one revealing aside.
The brand of comedy is familiar and it is easy to anticipate McCausland’s withering reaction to whatever new nugget of modern life crosses his path. Non-violent communication, as practised by his therapist wife – it’s “the biggest load of bollocks,” natch. But the act is underpinned by a redeeming geniality, and a sense that the joke’s usually on him – see the fitness routine which finds McCausland weighing any health gain against his Mars bar consumption en route to the gym.
His material on parenthood and domesticity is uncritically male: routines about the joy of boobs, and how his wife just loves being upset. Get onboard with that, though, and the jokes about lactation consultants and surreptitious ways to turn down the heating are easy to enjoy.
For two-thirds of the show McCausland’s blindness is low in the mix, though we’re never far from a surprising footnote about how this or that phenomenon intersects with his disability. In the later stages, though, he zeroes in on how blindness affects his and his family’s domestic life. These sections feel less generic, more emotionally significant, than what’s gone before (“What use is a dad whose colouring-in is worse than your own?”), but don’t stint on the humour. McCausland considers race from a blind man’s perspective, and memorably describes his experience of watching – well, hearing – an action movie. It’s an engaging enough mix, finally, of standup that speaks for midlife grumps everywhere, and standup that could hardly be more specific to McCausland.
• Touring until 25 June then again from 8 September.
