Tiff Stevenson: Seven

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It's arguable whether standup could exist without strong opinions; even the most innocuous observational humour is often predicated on an underlying value judgement. Given that standups tend to be professionally over-opinionated, it's difficult to pin down precisely what makes Tiff Stevenson's approach so distinctive. It may just be her simple honesty, rarely confrontational but unapologetic: this is what she believes, and these are the jokes she has to tell.

That said, where Stevenson supersedes lesser comics who tread on political territory is that her humour is not reliant on her audience agreeing with her. While it's fair to suspect that Seven will get its best reception from a progressive, feminist audience—and equally likely that the dickpic-hurling trolls that plague her online existence are not a demographic she cares about—you do not need to share all of Stevenson's opinions to find her funny. It's possible, for example, that audiences who do not feel the same consuming disdain for Kim Kardashian as Stevenson to nevertheless enjoy her performative rage on the subject.

Her style alternates between apologetically self-deprecating, sweetly acidic and righteously, entertainingly furious, and she balances these modes of delivery with care. Throughout the organically tangential show, she returns to themes raised by the Paris terror attacks of November 2015, which sometimes results in some abrupt tonal whiplash, but leads up to a surprisingly personal (and, she admits, "very name-droppy") recollection of her own connection to France's capital, an epic tale that easily justifies any clunkiness leading up to it.