Latest TVs have that sort of thing built in too, which can work.
@robstation01 if you have a Samsung phone or tablet you’ll probably find you can just cast Vimeo to the TV via some kind of Samsung cast system. I’m sure I encountered this before.
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Thanks to this thread I’ve set up the Google TV thing I’ve had sat in a box since Christmas and I’m chromecasting Cold Lasagna Hate Myself 1999 to my telly from Vimeo. Having a lovely time too
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Yup I did it tonight too. Only done the first half but it’s bloody great. Loved Repertoire but this is a HUGE step up on that. Just relentlessly clever and funny.
Some strong ‘more approachable Stewart Lee vibes’ at times.
I also seemed to get another live show with my purchase?
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Did exactly that, worked a treat, thanks very much!
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Just watched the second half. Absolutely awesome stuff. Best stand up show I’ve watched in a decade.
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Watched it last night, finally. So, so good! And in so many ways.
I’m glad it was a purchase as I potentially could watch it every Sunday night to counteract that pre-Monday morning/working week feeling. I tend to feel a bit of a slump after a really good live stream show because I can’t go back and watch it again!
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My TV has Airplay built in; i don’t know much about chromecast but you can’t sent 5.1 or Dolby Atmos via Airplay so the native apps are brilliant (and really nice to use)
When he finally shakes off the Leeisms I think he could become the best standup in the UK. Unfortunately it sounds like he has no interest in doing standup anymore…
I’ve watched Cold Lasagne 3 times in 2 weeks showing it to different people and laughed like a drain every time. Just an incredibly well written, well performed show.
“I’ve written four solo shows about being an undercover cop, meanwhile my real life is THIS”
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Oh no, really? Felt like this was his ‘90s comedian’ moment where he goes to the next level. DON’T LEAVE US!
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The sense I get from what I’ve heard in interviews etc was that he was planning to take 2020 off from standup even before the pandemic, and that he hadn’t really missed doing it.
Having been at a Friday night Glasgow Cold Lasagne tour show, I completely understand why he’d want time away from standup. About half the audience seemed to be folk who’d come to see him because he was on Mock the Week, and didn’t necessarily want to watch a two hour show about mental health.
I’m hoping he can “do a Kitson” and just slowly filter his audience down to absolute dweebs who hang off his every word. 
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I realise that a steady paycheque is not to be sniffed at for a standup comedian but I do think there’s a fundamental paradox with people like Acaster getting to this level off the back of people who - maybe this is snobbish, no in fact it definitely is - don’t fully “get” it. I’ve heard standups, people you’ve heard of but not like super-famous people, talk about actively choosing not to do Mock the Week because it involves hiring writers and churning out TV-friendly content and essentially being someone you aren’t, all for the the purpose of generating an audience at your shows who aren’t going to enjoy it. They know it’s negative for their career, but they also don’t want THAT career
I mean it’s telling that he filmed Repertoire at the Tabernacle which, if you’ve not been, is like a village hall. It looks small on TV but it’s half the size it looks and then 2 years later was selling out “half a cinema, or whatever this was”.
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It reminds me of when I went to see Stewart Lee a decade (or probably two) ago where he was being crucified by the press and church for Jerry Springer the opera, still had fans from the Fist of Fun era and was trying to carve out a niche for himself.
Saw him play a comedy club in Borough to a room of about 20 people, with the content being so polarising that half the audience left. Kevin Eldon and a few other comedians were there and it felt like watching a nervous breakdown on stage.
It was early days of social media back then, so I emailed him to see if he was ok and to say that the show challenged me a lot (mainly the 15 minute section about vomiting into the gaping anus of Christ), growing up in a fairly strict Christian household, but that it had made me think tons and I was really saddened to hear how horrible people had been to him over the show.
And he wrote me a nice note back. Which I sadly no longer have.
After that, his shows grew less awkward and that 20 capacity club grew to 50, which grew to 200 and then ended up being a TV show. But it took a while.
Maybe James will need to go on the same journey.
It’s odd to me, as I don’t watch Mock the Week so just watched this show based on the Taskmaster series, 1 appearance on WILTYou and the occasional listen to Off the Menu podcast. So this just seemed like a natural extension of those things to me?
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This remains the one SL bit I find almost impossible to listen to, and rarely go back to what is otherwise a really good show as a result.
I think what Acaster manages on Cold Lasagne is to take the “I hate my audience” bit but execute it in such a way that while it works, it’s still clearly a bit. Exemplified, I think, by his opening with "…and as a result I’ve attrached a demographic which, to be frank, I hate" and later, "Night after night I’m the person in the room who knows the most about comedy and I have to win your approval. Humiliating.". Constantly making himself OBVIOUSLY the butt of the joke.
Tangent, but this ties into the reason Stewart lee’s recent tours haven’t worked for me outside of London. You can’t stand on the stage of the sold out Reading Hexagon, capacity 1,200 people, or Southampton Mayflower (2,300 people) and act like the audience have wandered in out of curiosity. With the LST shows, you can at least maintain that suspension of disbelief.
You say you can’t turn up outside of London and act like the audience has wandered in out of curiosity, but I remember chatting to a woman a few years ago who had seen Stewart Lee in Tunbridge Wells on two or three occasions and wasn’t sure if she liked him or not. She lived in Tunbridge Wells and would go along to see whoever was on regardless. Only one example, but these people do exist!
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When I saw him in Coventry, the venue was maybe a quarter full. His opener was “I stand before you as someone who has grossly overestimated his appeal to the city of Coventry”.
Broke the ice well, then he just came and sat up in the crowd for most of the show.
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i think this was the bit that made me decide i loved him
he’s talked about this a bit in interviews, how it’s harder to remain the low status character as his fame has increased, which is why he tends to frame these rants now as “people who like me have brought too many of their friends along” etc. i think it works as i imagine it’s true in a lot of cases
and as above, i think in smaller towns there’s a lot of ‘going to see whatever comedian off the TV is coming’ which he also alludes to a lot
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he also said in an interview i watched recently that for years he genuinely did find there were patches of the audience that laughed a lot and parts that were stony silent… but that it eventually turned out he just needed a hearing aid.
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This is incredible. What a guy.
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Yeah, was gonna flag this angle. 
+1 on the ‘see whoever’s on at the local arts centre’ demographic definitely being a thing, too.
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I guess it differs from town to town but in Reading he was playing the same venue Idlewild play when they come to town, and it was IIRC about 30-40 quid a ticket. He definitely leaned into the “people who’ve come along with their mates” angle more but even then, for me it just didn’t quite work. I love SL but I think he basically perfected his art with S3 of Comedy Vehicle and it’s been diminishing returns since then, although I love hearing him talk about the craft of comedy.
(sorry for totally derailing the thread)
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