If you are serious about laughing, here’s a dataset for you and a visualization (below and here) you can use to explore it.
Good stand-up comedy looks easy, but it is a structured, precise, and subtle form of communication, a tightrope walk in front of a live audience, that is always a millisecond or a mumble away from failure.
To see masters and up-and-comers at work in front of a great audience is a privilege, and that makes the Comedy Central Presents series a treasure trove of great performances by the best and brightest in stand-up comedy.
Comedy happens on the edges, and there are various genres within stand-up comedy that you might or might not dig. If your tastes align with the users of IMBD.com, you might want to use their ratings to help you dive in to this series.
The dataset has IMDB id, IMDB episode info URL, and URL to view the episodes on Amazon Instant Video.
Questions
Which performers had the highest rated appearances?
- Stephen Lynch, Mitch Hedberg, Pablo Francisco, Brian Regan, and Gabriel Iglesias had the top 5 best ratings
Which performers had the most number of performances?
- Lewis Black appeared on the program 3 times, and 21 other comedians appeared 2 times on the series
What season had highest ratings on IMDB?
- Seasons 3, 5, and 1 were the best rated at 7.41, 7.40, and 7.29 respectively
What performances are most reviewed on IMDB?
- Performances by Mitch Hedberg, Dane Cook, and Pablo Francisco got more than 400 reviews to date
Were there differences in the linguistic content of the various performances?
- I am collecting subtitles for each performance in preparation for this analysis
