Louie: Season 1, DVD review There's a spikiness to the humour of the American stand-up Louis CK, which makes his comedy so raw, so noticeable. Here's a comic who can find laughs in the mundane but then suddenly shock with something weird, an extreme take on life, invariably his own. This 13-episode DVD captures him in full force at the Comedy Cellar in New York's Greenwich Village as he blends stand-up with vignettes of a character based on himself, a divorced father who occasionally gets to look after his two young daughters. Throughout there are moments that are dark, sardonic and awkward and sometimes Louie seems to go too far, but beneath it all there is humour, self-deprecation, satire and social observation, often, simply, about being a bloke and a father, being single and growing old. The opening episode, for instance, finds him stranding his daughter's school class on Harlem, in another episode there's an excruciating encounter with a doctor (guest star Ricky Gervais), there's a date that goes wrong and a disastrous lunch date with his mum. Sometimes an episode can veer off with two very different storylines but each has a purpose and all are delivered with an engagingly wry and occasionally brutal honesty. Louie: Season 1 is out on DVD now, priced £22.99