An inglorious TV tradition: Three hours of Tom Brady put-downs shows the roast is toast

If you want to see someone die in real time, may I suggest you turn on The Roast of Tom Brady. You’ll see the already dim light in the star US footballer’s eyes fade with every sexist, racist, homophobic joke that gets thrown around.

It’s three hours of your life you’ll never get back. It’s also Netflix’s highest rating show for the week beginning May 6, with the streamer claiming 13.8 million people watched it, with about 2 million tuning in for the livestream on May 5.

The Roast of Tom Brady featured American celebrities talking about the highs and lows of the NFL great’s life.Credit: Netflix

That’s 13.8 million people listening to roast host Kevin Hart talk about the “cum-stained” seats the audience was sitting on at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. Or maybe they were laughing along to the jokes that took aim at the size of Brady’s penis, how his wife, Giselle Bundchen, left him, or how he was a bad dad. Maybe they preferred the openly racist and sexist gags, or the ones about his former teammate, Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder and then took his own life, or the ones about Robert Kraft, the owner of Brady’s former team the New England Patriots, and how he was caught soliciting for sex workers.

Or, you know, maybe they enjoyed the sight of Kim Kardashian slowly reading the autocue and somehow delivering the smartest gag of the night (about how her dad defended O.J. Simpson). Or maybe they found Ben Affleck – who was notoriously caught on Brady’s jet with his family’s nanny on a trip to Vegas – stumbling through his lines about the toxicity of Brady’s fans to be endearing (it wasn’t).

And the good news? It’s not just Tom Brady getting roasted! Channel Seven had a crack at the format with the Roast of John Cleese (7Plus), in which the former Monty Python star takes a break from roasting his own controversial opinions over the past few years and instead sits through a line-up of Australian comedians having a crack.

Cleese, for his part, snapped back with witty ripostes about Vegemite and Rupert Murdoch. So topical! It was woeful masquerading as something daring, with host Shane Jacobson kicking off festivities from Melbourne’s Crown casino with a warning to the “woke keyboard warriors” to stand down.

Well, I am that woke keyboard warrior and I want better. I want comedy that breaks barriers without punching down. I want smart comedy that means something and isn’t just mean. I want something new. Because let’s be clear, these roasts are nothing new. They have a long and inglorious TV history, starting in 1974 when US channel NBC began The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, which was inspired by the original closed-door Friars Club roasts that had been running annually in New York since 1950.

Shane Jacobson kicked off The Roast of John Cleese with a warning for “woke keyboard warriors” to stand down.

Now, if Dean Martin’s presence conjures up ideas of a classy comedy experience, with the sound of martinis clinking gently in the background, a quick glance at YouTube will reveal they were not a million miles from the Brady roast, with racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny all rolled out on repeat. Hilarious? Not then and not now.

Then, in 1998, the US Comedy Central channel began broadcasting the Friars Club roasts – unfortunately too late for the 1993 roast of Whoopi Goldberg, when Ted Danson appeared in blackface – before branching out with their own celebrity roast specials from 2003. Perhaps you heard of the one where Pamela Anderson had her breasts groped by Andy Dick? Or that one where Rob Lowe’s sex tape with a 16-year-old was considered fair game?

The whole tradition of roasts is gross. No good ever comes of it. Let’s not forget that when Barack Obama roasted Donald Trump at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump was so infuriated, he decided to run for president. Do I need to tell you how that worked out?

And while Brady agreed to his roast and was the executive producer for the program – even though he has since said he regretted it enormously – is the roast a television tradition we want brought back? I say no. Comedy has moved on. As proof, you don’t even have to go past Netflix. It’s there you’ll find Hannah Gadsby’s groundbreaking comedy special Nanette and it’s where you’ll find Ali Wong busting Asian stereotypes with her stand-up.

The Tom Brady roast was part of the Netflix is a Joke Festival, which featured comedians performing all over LA in effort to get you to not cancel your subscription. And while the roast sucked up most of the oxygen, there was another show that was breaking the mould, John Mulaney’s Everybody’s in LA. Messy, silly and frequently unhinged, its upending of the late-night talk show format proved there is a new way forward in comedy that doesn’t leverage outrage for outrage’s sake. Sometimes you can just be funny and that’s enough.

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