I'm a pretty big fan of Swedish stand-up, and regularly go to live shows as well as listen to several Swedish comedy podcasts. So when I was browsing Netflix and saw that a comedian I'd never heard of had a Netflix special, I was confused. I mean, I might not know the name of every single Swedish comic, but I at least know the names of pretty much any comic big enough to sell out clubs. But this woman I'd never even heard of. I was confused as to how this random unknown comic had somehow gotten a Netflix special, how had this comedian slipped under my radar? But hey, I figured maybe I don't know as much about Swedish stand-up as I thought I did, I figured maybe someone at Netflix had managed to find some random unknown that's really good and filmed one of their club gigs.
When I started watching the special I was completely baffled. She walks out into what looks like a huge venue. I check and find out it's Avicii Arena. What!? For some context, that's the largest venue in Sweden. It's where acts like The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen play. The only comedians I can think of that have ever played there are Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Louis C. K (pre-scandal). As far as I know no Swedish comic has ever headlined the venue. It's huge. And here this random, completely unknown (to me) comic is there, headlining the same venue. It felt like I'd been transported to some parallel universe.
So I start watching the special, and I just continued to be baffled. Nothing she said was funny, at all. One of her opening "bits" is her saying the names of some of the cities she's played in on the tour leading up the taping. Every time she says a city, the audience cheers and laughs. She's not telling any jokes about the cities, literally just saying the names of cities and people are laughing. What the hell is going on, why are people laughing?
The whole special just keeps going like that, with the audience cheering and laughing at every sentence she says, regardless of it's actually funny. The audience repeatedly laughs at the set-ups, and other things that aren't supposed to be funny. Johanna actually comments on this herself several times in the special, saying things like "I don't know why that got a laugh..."
I had to look up Johanna Nordström to find out what the heck is going on. Apparently she has a famous podcast. Suddenly it all made sense. It's obvious that the only reason Johanna Nordström is playing huge venues and has a Netflix special is because of her famous podcast. It's not because she's a good comic. She sells out venues because fans of her podcast want to go and see their favourite podcaster. They're not stand-up fans, that's why they laugh at the wrong places.
This is a terrible special. Watch literally anything else. If you'd like to see a good Swedish comedian, watch Petrina Solange's special on SVT Play.
