New York comic Mike Birbiglia gets his laughs from life as a ‘regular, 46-year-old male human’

Mike Birbiglia has been described as looking and acting ‘like a regular 46-year-old male human’, but he really is anything but.

Mike Birbiglia in The Good Life. Picture: Clifton Prescod/Netflix

Comedians routinely mine their lives and their wives for their punchlines but most of the time we figure it really is just a joke, an exaggerated, fictional version of events. Not so with New York stand-up comic Mike Birbiglia, who somehow brings us right into his living room and his marriage, not to mention his heart and soul.

Birbiglia’s one-man shows, which take audiences to the edge of corn and porn, are relatively unknown in Australia, even though he’s been in the game for more than 20 years.

But now, with his latest, The Good Life, on Netflix, it’s time to trawl through his backlist and give over to the joy of bingeing on Birbiglia. And it is a joy, because while he tackles complex issues – like not wanting to be a father and not really liking his own father – Birbiglia can’t help delivering life-affirming, optimistic messages.

The Good Life has him trying to figure what a good life might look like, as he relates stories of rearing his 10-year-old daughter Oona, while also coming to terms with the tragedy of his stroke-ridden father. It’s all pretty raw and very relatable.

Birbiglia’s wife, a poet called Jen (who writes under the name of J. Hope Stein) is a big part of his monologues. They’ve been married for 17 years and (fingers crossed) it feels like the real deal: Birbiglia talks perceptively about the gift of shared moments – yes, he says, it really is just moments – and the luck of finding someone who gets your jokes.

Jen’s not the only one.

Birbiglia, who is also an actor, director, producer and writer, is not famous, but he’s had consistent considerable success with six solo shows – Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, Thank God For Jokes, The New One, The Old Man and the Pool, and, of course, The Good Life – all of which are on Netflix, and some of which have spawned books and albums. Once you’re done with those, take a look at the 2016 movie, Don’t Think Twice – an indie about improvised comedy – which he wrote, directed and starred in, and which is available on Prime Video.

Back to The Good Life and Birbiglia’s ability to make you laugh and cry and cringe and feel wise all in the space of 80 minutes.

Oona is challenging his sense of fatherhood by asking him questions he can’t answer; and his neurologist dad’s decline is raising questions about his own childhood reactions to this remote figure. We know we’re in for a journey both hilarious and profound when he says: “When I was a kid, I always viewed my dad as larger than life. He was a doctor and in his free time he got a law degree. That’s how much he didn’t want to be a dad ... In fairness, we weren’t great kids. We always wanted a dad.” Good for a laugh, but like, sad and real, right?

Much of Birbiglia’s charm comes from the fact that this lapsed Catholic, who was reared in middle-class Massachusetts, is of moderate height, moderate build and moderate looks (albeit with a killer smile) and seems, despite the existential angst, prepared to settle for moderate happiness. As Belinda Luscombe wrote recently in Time Magazine, Birbiglia “looks and acts like a regular 46-year-old male human”.

Except that he’s not so ordinary. He told Luscombe he’s been in therapy since the age of 22, and he reminds his audiences that he survived a tumour on his bladder and lives with a rare sleepwalking condition called “rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder”. It was diagnosed after he ran through a motel room window while asleep. He tells audiences he takes medication, sleeps in a sleeping bag and wears mittens so that he can’t unzip himself while sleeping.

No wonder, some might say, he’s into comedy.

Birbiglia addresses very “first world” problems but sails close to the edge sometimes on taste. Yet he’s hard to label. In the Times interview he defended comedian Tony Hinchcliffe (who got into strife during the US presidential campaign over a Puerto Rico joke), telling Luscombe: “You can like the joke or not, but it was a joke.” But when a fellow comedian urges him to “go easy on the molestation stuff” ahead of a meeting with the late Pope Francis, Birbiglia reacts: “I thought, I will when they do. You first, Catholic Church.”

It’s no surprise really that he turns out to be close to people like Ira Glass (This American Life); Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul); and John Mulaney (There’s a horse in the hospital). They are his kind of funny. Indeed it’s a minor tragedy a 2008 TV show based on Birbiglia’s life with REMSBD never got made. Odenkirk, who bears a resemblance, was set to play Birbiglia – and that would have been a performance worth watching. When CBS didn’t go ahead, Birbiglia created his Sleepwalk With Me show, which moved to the screen and prompted a book and an album. It’s possible that even with a sleeping bag, this man rarely sleeps, so busy has he been with constant live tours and spots in a host of films and TV shows. He even has a podcast, Working It Out, in which he interviews other funny people.

The Good Life is good, but The New One – released in 2019 – is better. Birbiglia talks about the lead-up to their pregnancy and birth of Oona, and of how tough it is to be a father, shut out from the bubble of love that envelops Jen and their baby daughter. It’s incredibly hilarious, honest and moving – and probably should be mandatory viewing for all new fathers.

Mike Birbiglia: The Good Life is streaming on Netflix.

Graeme Blundell is on leave.