Bill Burr

Burr built everything on stand-up first, and the acting career is downstream of the persona: confrontational, observational, permanently mid-argument with the culture. He has been called a comedian's comedian by people on the American circuit, and Rolling Stone called him the undisputed heavyweight champ of rage-fuelled humour, which is accurate about the volume and slightly unfair about the craft. The bits are constructed carefully. They only sound like a man losing his temper.

On screen he mostly gets hired to be exactly that. Kuby on Breaking Bad is muscle-for-hire with a customer-service manner. Detective Walsh in Date Night, Officer Walter in Walk of Shame, Mark Mullins in The Heat: all short, all loud, all funny because he arrives already annoyed. F is for Family is where he turned the persona into a whole world, creating the series and voicing Frank Murphy, a 1970s father whose rage is the family weather system, and the show is much sadder than its reputation suggests.

The interesting development is dramatic. Ray Bishop in The King of Staten Island is the best acting he has done, a firefighter dating into a grieving household, played with a patience the stage act does not have room for. He directed and starred in Old Dads in 2023, which puts his opinions on screen with fewer filters than the stand-up does. He also voices a turtle in Leo and plays a coach in Reservation Dogs, so the range is wider than the shouting suggests.