Netflix's 'Free Bert' is chaotic, funny and cringe in the same breath. Here's why you must binge the show and read the subtext.
Until stream scrolling for something to watch on Netflix, the name Bert Kresischer was not exactly a flashing neon sign saying, ‘funny ahead’.
While the American comedian is not particularly well known in Mzansi, this show will make him a household name and place him alongside Jerry Seinfeld, Leon Schuster, David Kau, and Ricky Gervais.
Free Bert is a six-part, thirty-minute comedy series that is as funny as it is cringe.
Bert plays, well, Bert, and he and his family move to Beverly Hills as his standup comedy career goes from strength to strength,
But, of course, Bert is not exactly woke, clean-cut and sophisticated La La land material. Instead, he’s the comedian whose brand is all about booze, being shirtless, and a bit of chaos.
His family is not far behind. Aarden Myrin plays his wife, LeeAnne, who admits in an episode that the trailer she grew up in was about as big as the shoe closet of her Frenemy, surgeon’s wife Chantell Vanderthal (Mandell Maughan).
Myrin also executive produces the show.
Bert’s two daughters, Georgia and Ila, are trying to adjust to being in a new, posh school. Georgia is around thirteen and trying to fit in at the start, and soon becomes one of the popular girls when she displaces Vanderthal’s daughter’s pole position after dating the popular boy.
Younger Ila, on the other hand, is as foul-mouthed as her dad and muscles through her days effortlessly.
Trailer as big as a shoe closet
The setup is a recipe for hilarity, and Free Bert serves it up in American-size portions.
From the moment that Bert performs at a Rob Lowe dinner party through to his disastrous T-Pain podcast interview, his attempts to fit in with the “boys club” of Beverly Hills through to how he transforms from a shirtless belly-guy through to a respectable golf-shirt-donning suburbanite; it’s all loaded with dark humour and a generous helping of cringe.
And it’s intentional, not haphazard slapstick.
Bert has no filter and lands his family at the wrong end of the Hill’s social construct several times.
Some critics have slammed the show for its excessive ick, but they’re missing the point. Free Bert is not just funny; it makes a few damn-right points about the world we live in and the people that we surround ourselves with, and how many of us try to fit into the uncomfortable mould that peer expectation forces into the conversation.
Watch the trailer:
It’s not unique to Beverly Hills. Sandton and the balance of the mink-and-manure belt also reek of eternal status-seeking and forever selfie-ready, Botox realities.
Now, imagine the old Castrol ads’ Boet trying to fit into the Friday afternoon cocktail set.
Status seeking is a Botox reality
Status-seeking and achieving social ascendancy are ultimately meaningless. You can dress up a piggie in a ball gown, but hogs will always be muddy buddies at heart. And that’s the true bottom line of Free Bert.
The true cost of trying to fit in is erasing yourself. There is a scene in an episode where, at one end of the strip club, Bert’s with his new friends, in a golf shirt. He spots T-Pain and company across the room, rushes over for a few shots, but shirtless.
He then rushes back, dons the tee again, and drinks with his buddies. It’s farcical but lands the point hard.
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In between the social commentary and the extreme funny, here’s the verdict: Free Bert takes about half an episode to get into, but then you’re hooked.
Bert Kreischer’s truck-driving comedy is as sharp as Rickey Gervais (if he were a truck driver), as nonsensical at times as that of Jerry Seinfeld and as messy as Seth Rogan in The Studio.
The support cast is brilliant. The storyline is loose-ish towards the end, but who cares? In the show, you’ll also learn a lot about undescended testicles, which is based on Kreisher’s own injuries a decade or so ago.
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