Before I dive into this story, allow me to quantify that I love comedian Jeff Ross and I appreciate that Netflix’s comedy arm has singlehandedly made standup specials mainstream again.
But the “supersize me” approach to their recent “The Roast of Kevin Hart” was sad and not very funny. I don’t know who I felt more pain for between roast icon Ross — who even as a writer and executive producer had to know the format he had inherited from the great roast masters of the past was now a mess — or the horrible and awkward cutaways to Pete Davidson fake smiling or Chelsea Handler waiting for the whole thing to end.
Netflix’s runtime for this special clocked in at three hours. Three hours of not funny. They even stopped cutting away to co-CEO Ted Sarandos. He must have left.
So how did a format with such an entertaining legacy in comedy get so tarnished so quickly?
Netflix got into the business of roast specials starting in 2019 with the series “Historical Roasts,” where Ross hosted fictionalized versions of comedy roasts for figures like Abraham Lincoln and Anne Frank. Bizarre and not funny. In 2024, Netflix returned to the format in a massive way by roasting Tom Brady, positioning it as “the greatest roast of all time” as a nod to the NFL-er’s own GOAT status. The show was hosted by Kevin Hart and featured celebs such as Will Ferrell and Ben Affleck.
It was also an overnight star-making turn for Nikki Glaser. She earned her keep as an acerbic-yet-clever comedian that paved the way for her Golden Globes hosting gigs in 2025 and 2026. (She notably stayed away from “The Roast of Kevin Hart.”)
Even though the Brady roast was strangely staged in the Kia Forum with a capacity of 18,000 (any comedian will tell you that kind of scale is a comedy killer), the show mostly worked beyond its unbearable three-hour length. Why? Because there were real comedians running the show such as Ross, Hart and Glazer doing the roasting — and even more importantly, Brady was so awkward and uncomfortable, it was funny! It was a spectacle. It worked.
Brady’s reminded me of the classic installment of “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast” where the subject was then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1973. Legends such as Jack Benny, Don Rickles, Phyllis Diller and Jonathan Winters skewered him and it was comedy gold. Yes, there was a time when the roast special was truly special.
My own father had a 1967 bootleg recording taken from an 8-track, featuring the roast of Rickles at the Friars Club, with Roast Master Jack E. Leonard, and comedians such as Flip Wilson, Jackie Vernon, Johnny Carson, Pat Paulsen, Norm Crosby and Buddy Hackett. It felt like rare access to the inner sanctum of the comedy establishment.
From 1968 to 1971, Friars Club Roasts were televised and in 1974, Dean Martin started his own series of televised roasts that ran for a decade. Martin’s roast specials had a casual, smoky, liquor-soaked “Rat Pack” feel, with comedians dishing out devastating insults that framed these infamous gatherings.
Then, from 1998 to 2002, Comedy Central produced and televised the New York Friars Club Roasts, and in 2003, they launched “Comedy Central Roast,” which ran until 2019 with their final roast of Alec Baldwin. The shows were raunchy and launched the career of Ross after a very funny Drew Carey roast in 1998. A year later at the roast of Jerry Stiller, Ross became an overnight sensation with his famous line: “I wouldn’t f–k Sandra Bernhard with Bea Arthur’s dick.” He became a regular at the Friars Club and was given the title of “Roastmaster General.”
The Comedy Central shows worked as they respected the art form, had a more intimate setting of a studio and they roasted celebrities who were good comedy like Pamela Anderson (2005), William Shatner (2006), Bob Saget (2008), Joan Rivers (2009), David Hasselhoff (2010), Donald Trump (2011), Charlie Sheen (2011) and Roseanne Barr (2012). There were some duds like Justin Bieber that felt like Tom Brady’s but not funny. Alec Baldwin’s, meanwhile, felt so shmaltzy, it was dull.
Fast forward to the Kevin Hart mess. The show had 25 comedy writers and very little comedy. And oddly, Brady, who makes a cardboard performance, is credited as an executive producer along with Ross and Hart. The producers and Netflix called on favors to get cameos from big names like Jennifer Lopez and Dwayne Johnson, but where were the comedians?
Why were the Williams sisters roasting Hart? In the old days, the head table or dais was packed with pros. This show featured a line up of mostly unknowns or little-known personalities whose scripts were scripted by the gang of 25. Three hours of Lizzo fat jokes, Chelsea Handler slut jokes and Kevin Hart short jokes. No joke.
The rest of the roasters were retired athletes … why? And the worst of it beyond host Shane Gillis, who kept apologizing for not being funny, was the roastee himself, Hart. He was given a microphone, and was scripted to jump up every two minutes and feign insult and protest. The Dwayne Johnson routine of sleeping with Hart’s wife was so overplayed and a bad attempt at paying homage to Will Smith’s infamous Oscars standoff with Chris Rock. And endless childish jokes about Draymond Green. What was he doing there?
Watching the cast read from a prompter was altogether cringeworthy. Production again was three hours and there was no reason for it to be live. Netflix should’ve just filmed it and cut it down to the best one hour or 90 minutes.
The celebrity roast began in smoky rooms at the Friars Club in New York City, with blue humor and blue cigar smoke. It worked because it was inside and intimate with legends taking shots at each other. But with Netflix’s production, which surely has another “The Roast of [Insert Celebrity Name Here]” around the corner, the artform loses its shocking, had-to-be-there appeal, practically bringing the roast to a UFC cage fight in the Vegas sphere.
I know that Buddy Hackett, George Burns and Milton Berle are rolling in their graves. But who knows? Maybe Jeff Ross can save the roast at the end of the day. The roastmaster general has done it once before and he can do it again.
Barry Avrich is the creative force behind Melbar Entertainment Group, one of the largest producers of non-scripted content in North America. Barry has produced and directed over 70 award-winning documentaries and filmed productions including “Made You Look,” “The Last Mogul,” “Prosecuting Evil,” and the upcoming “Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been ” with Taraji P. Henson . Barry’s best selling memoir, “Moguls, Monsters and Madmen” was released in 2017, and his book, “The Devil Wears Rothko: Inside The Art Scandal that Rocked the World” (Simon and Shuster) was released in 2025.
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