Heidi Regan

Stand-up comedian Ian Cognito died onstage during a performance in Bicester on Thursday night.

A popular TV and radio host in the Cleveland area in the '70s, Ron Sweed's syndicated show was popular in Detroit and he made many visits to the Motor City

Comedy is everything. A reprieve from the world or an accessible way into it, the genre of “Mary Kay and Johnny” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has evolved into wider and wider territory over the many years it’s spent on TV. Dating from the ’40s through the ’80s, it was easy enough to tell a hard-hitting drama from an escapist comedy: The laughs were literally embedded in each episode.

The Twilight Zone

Hannah Friedman

'The Tzar Spangled Banner.'

A show like Sex Education could never get made in America. A portrait of the sex lives of teenagers that’s both graphically detailed and earnestly empathetic? We’re far too puritanical, too shame-bound, too easily titillated for such a delicate balancing act to stand a chance. Thank goodness, then, that one side effect of the global reach of certain streaming services is to render the distinction between U.S. and international TV moot. Netflix’s latest drama is set in the United Kingdom, but its winning combination of emotion and candor is available to all.

Packing the cobblestone streets and clad in prosthetic beards, sandals, and crowns of thorns, thousands of drunken revelers poured into the Vatican this week to take part in the city-state’s annual ChristCon Pub Crawl. “Every December, it seems like there are more of these jackasses at bars, taking selfies in St. Peter’s Basilica, and tying up traffic while decked out as some version of Our Lord and Savior,” said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, noting that ChristCon’s all-day route, which begins at the...

Every week, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for November 25 through December 1 is “Battle of the Sexes,” the fifth episode of the third season of Netflix’s F Is for Family. Netflix’s F Is for Family is a weird little hybrid of a show. It’s sometimes very funny, and it’s sometimes very sad, which isn’t that unusual for a comedy...

A comedy featuring a British music hall star that enjoys cult status in Germany is to receive its UK premiere more than 50 years after it was made. Dinner for One - staring Freddie Frinton - was filmed by a German TV company in 1963. It has been shown every New Year's Eve on German TV since 1972, winning it a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

Because the goblins of our current administration have skin thinner than a piece of wet tissue, The White House Correspondents’ Association has announced that, for the first time in more than three decades, they will not feature a comedian at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Instead, they’ve invited Ron Chernow, a prolific, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, among others.

What would Jesus think about the Trump administration? The YouTube comedy group Friend Dog Studios created an updated version of Jesus to share a new take on biblical quotes just for modern Republicans. GOP Jesus also shares some thoughts on healing the sick, turning the other cheek and the War on Christmas.

Louis C.K. performed a low-key stand-up performance in Paris, France – the latest as he returns to the comedy world following the sexual harassment allegations that torpedoed his career. The comedian performed a show, understood to be a set of over an hour, at the The New York Comedy Night at the Theatre de l’Oeuvre. The show, which is hosted by American expat comedian Sebastian Marx, comes after his advertised stand-up performance at Manhattan’s Comedy Cellar at the end of October.

Analytical as ever, the comic has strong opinions about disgraced peers like Cosby. He says the audience is always right (even about his #MeToo joke).

Oscar-nominated director, Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused/Boyhood), has signed to direct a film surrounding the life of comedian Bill Hicks.

Comedy icon John Cleese has a pair of tough questions for evangelical voters who support President Donald Trump. White evangelicals have been among Trump’s most ardent backers. A poll released earlier this month found 71 percent of them approve of the president. That led to two questions from Cleese, sent via Twitter over the weekend:

“Better Call Saul” inches closer to its sequel series “Breaking Bad” each season—not just in terms of converging storylines, but also in overall tone. The jovial and light-hearted nature of early seasons has given way to darkness. The silly antics have been replaced by moves of desperation, and in the scope of dynamic television characters, few rival Jimmy McGill’s quality and complexity. Each new episode of “Better Caul Saul” adds a layer of the titular character to further his evolution into Saul Goodman, whom viewers came to know in “Breaking Bad.”

HBO has given a series order to The Righteous Gemstones, a comedy from Danny McBride about a televangelist and his family. The series will tell the story of a world-famous televangelist family with a history of deviance, greed and, yes, charitable work, all in the name of Jesus. It's the third series McBride has done for HBO, following Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals.

A new box set makes the case that the pioneering female stand-up should be considered in the same class as David Letterman and Andy Kaufman.