Review: Ed Night: The Plunge

“Five years…” growls a reflective Ed Night, midway through the comeback show he wasn’t sure he’d ever do. Where Elvis famously went all-leather for his comeback special, Night has gone for an orange Alcatraz prison top, which – with that always-surprising voice – does lend an ominous air to the early stages.

But no, this hour is enormous fun, if hardly family viewing. The angry young man from 2019 is now a little older, wiser, but with a pleasingly surreal edge, mixing topical stuff with flights of fancy about air hockey day-jobs and XL Bully ants. Imagine if Noel Fielding taught comedy to troubled ex-cons: this could be his star pupil.

A lot has happened to Night personally too, and while sexuality and neurodiversity journeys are hardly rare this year, he’s refreshingly frank, as ever - you will come away wondering which two TV comics went full homophobe, in response. There are health scares, and a more heartfelt section about loss, but all told with his caustic verve. 

He’s had a few years, but the material here is exceptionally strong, and between routines there’s some novel crowd work too. Particularly good is his blink-and-miss-it Jedi mind trick, on the one guy not quite on board.  

Five year breaks, then. It might just be the way forward.