Best-reviewed Edinburgh Fringe shows 2024
Matt Forde and Nina Conti were the best-reviewed comedy performers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, based on analysis undertaken by British Comedy Guide.
The statistics come from 4,223 star-rated reviews issued by the 121 publications that were reviewing comedy at this year's festival, ranging from broadsheet newspapers to micro-blogs.
Matt Forde: The End Of An Era Tour and Nina Conti: Whose Face Is It Anyway? - both of which ran through the whole of August at the Pleasance Courtyard - scored multiple five-star reviews, giving them the joint highest average ratings of the Fringe, at 4.8 out of 5.
In descending order of scoring, the following 68 productions received six or more reviews resulting in an average score of 4 stars and above. Click on any title to find out more about the show and read the reviews.
For the purposes of this analysis, 'comedy' shows are defined as those categorised as such within one or other of the festival's various programmes (1,638 shows in total), as opposed to sections such as theatre, cabaret or musicals. Comic productions in those other sections that scored very highly with their reviewers included DIVA: Live From Hell!, Every Brilliant Thing, Bill's 44th, magician Colin Cloud, Burnout Paradise and I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.
BCG's methodology does not add weighting based on the perceived value of different publications, nor the absolute number of ratings achieved by any one show. Better-known acts always attract a greater number of critics to review them in the first place, thus enjoy an inbuilt advantage of a chance to appear on the list. A number of less-prominent productions will doubtless have been worthy of inclusion in the list but omitted as a result: for example, 1, 2, 3. Sh*t, That's My OCD received only one review this festival, but it was a full five stars. If more reviewers had seen the show and scored it similarly, it would likely have featured above.
To find other comedians to look out for in the months ahead, browse our listings and see who's going on tour.
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