The 10 best comedy specials

1 HANNAH GADSBY

Nanette

Gadsby, who grew up gay in Tasmania, Australia—where homosexuality was only legalized in 1997—was sick of being self-deprecating for a laugh. So she created a tour de force performance that deconstructs all the familiar tropes of stand-up comedy. In the ashes, the comic bridges her history of trauma to contemporary culture’s failure to address systemic abuse. Nanette kickstarted a global conversation, ensuring that her underrepresented perspective was finally