HBO Max Is Getting 'Chappelle's Show', 'Key & Peele', 'Nathan For You' And More In November
A bunch of Comedy Central programming recently journeyed over to CBS All Access, in addition to being available on Hulu. Now a selection of some of the network's best programming will also be made available on HBO Max starting next month.
HBO Max has announced that the sketch comedy shows Chappelle's Show, Key & Peele, and Inside Amy Schumer will be joining their streaming library on November 1, 2020. Joining them will be the COPS parody Reno 911! and the brilliant documentary series satire Nathan for You. If you've somehow never seen these shows, we picked some choice moments from each of them to convince you to finally give them a chance.
Chappelle's Show
With a mix of stand-up, sketch comedy and musical performances, Dave Chappelle's comedy series brought thoughtful, brilliant, and hilarious racial, social and showbiz commentary to Comedy Central. The series quickly became one of the network's most popular and praised shows, and it garnered even more attention when Chappelle famously walked away from the series in the middle of production on the third season. It's a shame we didn't get more of this show, but what we got is still brilliant.
Above, you'll find one of my favorite sketches from the series about Clayton Bigsby, a blind white supremacist who also just so happens to be Black. It actually (unfortunately) feels even more timely and relevant now than it did when it aired back in 2003. This is NSFW due to persistent use of the n-word throughout.
Chappelle's Show is also coming to Netflix starting on November 1 too.
Inside Amy Schumer
For some reason Amy Schumer gets more flack than almost any other female comedian in the business. But it mostly seems to be from grumpy, sexually frustrated men who only seem to focus on tearing down her superficially and falling back on the typical ignorant argument that female comedians aren't funny. But Schumer's sketch series has ample evidence to prove otherwise.
One of my favorite sketches is this one featuring Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patricia Arquette talking about the moment in their career when they officially become unfuckable. This one is also NSFW since it's uncensored and has some salty language.
Key & Peele
Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele broke out with this hilarious sketch show that basically picked up where Chappelle's Show left off. Also filled with a lot of sketches featuring racial and social commentary, Key & Peele wasn't quite as edgy, but it did have a little more variety in the topics they covered, and it allowed the actors to play an eclectic array of different characters.
Perhaps the most famous sketch features Key as a teacher who mispronounces all the students names, but my favorite sketch is another riff on nomenclature with an odd assortment of athletes playing in an all-star college football tournament. All I'll say is, "The Player Formerly Known as Mousecop."
Nathan For You
Nathan For You is framed as a reality series where Nathan Fielder acts as a consultant who helps independently owned businesses try to revamp their establishment in order to increase their consumer base and garner some more attention. Fielder is like a modern day Andy Kaufman in this series. The character he plays and the plans he executes are a stroke of genius. It's a cringey kind of comedy show, but it's just so damn good.
The clip above is one of the more immature segments from early in the series, but it's a good place to start since it only gets weirder and more awkward from here.
Reno 911!
As one of the longest running shows to air on Comedy Central, it's almost impossible to have not seen at least a bit of Reno 911!. The parody of cops follows an outstanding ensemble cast featuring Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant, Wendy McLendon-Covey, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Cedric Yarbrough, Niecy Nash, Carlos Alazraqui, Mary Birdsong, Ian Roberts, and Joe Lo Truglio policing the wild city of Reno, Nevada with hilarious results.
One of the things that makes Reno 911! so great is the cavalcade of guest stars. One of the best recurring guest stars was Zach Galifianakis as a character named Frisbee, and you can see some of his finest moments in the compilation above.
It's not likely that HBO Max will have the new Quibi episodes of Reno 911!, but now that the short form streaming service is calling it quits, those episodes are probably bound to end up somewhere in the future.
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All of these shows will be streaming on HBO Max starting on November 1, but you'll still be able to find them at Hulu and CBS All Access since this isn't an exclusive streaming rights deal for the shows. They join South Side and The Other Two, which are available on HBO Max and will have new seasons on the streaming service instead of Comedy Central.