Andrew Maxwell: Showtime

World-weariness has gripped this year's selection of Fringe comedy the only way a mass outpouring of apathy can: reluctantly. Few who've fallen prey to the melancholy have taken more inspiration from it than Andrew Maxwell, who uses Showtime to examine the political fallout of the last year alongside the squabbles within his own (recently enlarged) family. 

The Irish comic, returning for his 22nd Fringe as a performer, is an undeniable crowd pleaser, and the addition of a newborn hasn't dampened his knack for conjuring a damn funny image (accents are an underrated skillset for comedians). There are good routines on a Sweeney-influenced priest and a Cork local encountering what Maxwell assumes is Britain's main trade export to the Emerald Isle: stag weekends.

Unfortunately what betrays the potential of his wider premise is that he never really breaks stride into the kind of biting satire that made him famous. By his standards, he's on autopilot here, not branching out beyond the Trump and Brexit polemics you could hear almost anywhere else this festival. That's not even to say that satire of such things has jumped the shark, just that the insights he's offering on them have. 

There are recycled jokes from his previous, superior sets and, ironically despite all the topical issues he primes for takedown, his best work here is in spoofing the timeless family dynamic. His talent is undiminished, and the zinger count is still higher than average. It's just not the unequivocal triumph that, in a year where comedic targets lined themselves up like sitting ducks, it probably should've been.