British Comedy Guide

Jimmy Carr announces Netflix special

Monday 9th November 2015, 6:04pm


Jimmy Carr

Jimmy Carr is to record a new stand-up special this weekend for streaming service Netflix.

Proclaiming "DVD is dead", the comic wrote on Twitter: "Thanks to everyone who's bought my DVDs over the years - sadly it's the end of an era, there's no DVD this Christmas. But that's not all folks.

"Pleased to announce I'm taping a Netflix Original Comedy Special this weekend (DVD is dead, long live Netflix)."

The special is expected to be available via the internet-based streaming platform in time for the Christmas holidays.

Traditional DVD releases of stand-up shows are increasingly being accompanied by their availability as digital downloads, but Carr's announcement today marks the first move to online-only distribution for a British stand-up.

However, an almost equally increasing number of acts are also releasing their shows in the premium Blu-ray format, which offers HD pictures and better sound qualty than DVD.

This year's line-up of stand-up releases also includes a number of special limited editions, such as personalised and hand-signed covers, from the likes of Michael McIntyre and Kevin Bridges.

Other comics bringing shows to DVD and/or Blu-ray this season include Alan Carr, Dapper Laughs, Henning Wehn and Paul Chowdhry.

This year also marks the final DVD releases for the best-selling comics Jethro and Roy Chubby Brown.

Universal Pictures, who distribute the releases from both stand-ups, are believed to have been working toward winding down stand-up releases on DVD for a number of years.

Brown told the Hull Daily Mail: "It's the last DVD I'll release, because time has caught up with us.

"If you do a show now, there'll be someone recording it in the audience and it'll be on YouTube ten minutes later; it kind of makes releasing DVDs redundant."

For a full list of comedy DVDs and Blu-rays being released in the run-up to Christmas 2015, see our Shop Coming Soon page.

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