Hannibal Buress

Lincoln Rice is a dentist, and he talks like one. In Broad City (2014) Hannibal Buress delivers every line at the same mild pitch, whatever the line is, while Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer run at full volume for half an hour at a stretch. He does not join in. That refusal is the performance, and it made him the funniest man on the programme: the gap between how loud the room is and how quiet he is does the work a punchline would normally do.

The pitch came from the stand-up. He began performing in 2002 while at Southern Illinois University, moved to New York in 2008, and spent the next few years writing rather than appearing: Saturday Night Live in 2009 and 2010, then 30 Rock from 2010 to 2012, where he also turned up in episodes. His stand-up, from Animal Furnace (2012) onwards, is laconic and observational, small absurdities of daily life described by a man who can hardly believe he is bothered by them, and delivered so flatly that the timing has to do everything. From 2012 to 2020 he co-hosted and wrote The Eric Andre Show alongside Eric Andre, which suited him: the comedy around him was surreal and improvised, and he is at his best when the chaos belongs to somebody else.

What we know works is Broad City. We laughed at Lincoln more reliably than at anyone else across five seasons, and it was the discipline that did it: a lesser comic would have gone looking for a bigger reaction, and Buress never once raised his voice to get one. He has said that comedy is basically self-deprecation, and Lincoln bears that out; he is a man content to be the least interesting person at the table, which is why we could not stop watching him. When the programme lost its way in the later years and Ilana started addressing the camera, he was the reason we stayed.

Film has been less generous. He was Officer Watkins in Neighbors (2014) and Coach Wilson in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), supporting turns in a large comedy and a larger franchise, and since we have not reviewed either we will say only that a scene or two is not a part. The one fair criticism of the stand-up, that it can wander before it lands, is also the risk of the deadpan on screen: it needs a loud room to push against, and a small role in a big film rarely provides one.

Start with the early seasons of Broad City and watch for the man in the corner who is not shouting. Then wonder, as we do, what he would be like if someone wrote him a part where he had to.