EPISODE
SEASON
Lady Dynamite - Season 1
Maria Bamford stars as a fictionalized version of herself in this comedy, loosely based on what the dynamic comic and actress has accepted to be her life. The occasionally surreal episodes, refracted across multiple periods of the actor/comedian's life, tell the story of a woman who loses, and then finds, herself.
6 April 1964, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
16 April 1965, New York City, New York, USA
6 August 1976, Long Beach, California, USA
3 April 1962, Lima, Ohio, USA
26 September 1965, Chicago, Illinois, USA
31 January 1976, New Hyde Park, New York, USA
May 20, 2016
[Bamford's] brilliant new online series Lady Dynamite, which manages to take TV comedy another jolt forward, shows a version of her life that included her efforts in the comedy world as well as her struggles with mental health issues back in Duluth.
May 25, 2016
Lady Dynamite was a blast of technicolour goofiness. Characters turned into animals. There were cartoon interludes. Bamford's adorable pug spoke with the voice of Werner Herzog. Time and again, the joyful strangeness outweighed the fear.
May 23, 2016
Maria Bamford -- her measured openness, her mingled fear and hope, her earnest desire to do good and to do well -- is the flame that gives Lady Dynamite's its warmth and its fire.
May 19, 2016
When Lady Dynamite hits on the right absurd note, it is spectacularly funny and feels original and vibrant.
May 18, 2016
Welcome to Lady Dynamite, where not knowing exactly what's going on is half the fun.
May 20, 2016
She has a rare knack for playing up the laugh-out-loud absurdities of this surreal premise, all without ignoring the struggles she's depicting.
June 14, 2016
This odd, kaleidoscopic series from Maria Bamford is great, if you like twisted scripted comedy, the theme of mental illness, and hallucinogenic flights of fancy, which I do.
May 23, 2016
As fodder for contemporary comedy, mental illness and the casual cruelty of Hollywood - not to mention thinly veiled autobiography - have been done death.
September 26, 2016
It's a show that follows the well-worn track of stand-up-comic-does-TV but it ambitiously seeks to subvert not just the sitcom genre, but more dangerously the stand-up-comic-does-TV sitcom genre. It's risky, but it pays off.
May 20, 2016
For a show whose central character is simultaneously reaching her breaking point, recovering from her breakdown, and trying to sort her life out post-breakdown, Lady Dynamite is very, very funny.