A lot of comedy specials tend to open with small volleys of jokes about broadly relatable individualist themes. This is the ‘throat-clearing’ aisle for a stand-up comedian. Romantic woes, driving etiquette, visits to the dentist. Daniel Fernandes takes the polar opposite approach in his latest pay-as-you-like special Alive and Vaccinated, released on Friday night on his YouTube channel.

This is a 99-minute affair and Fernandes deliberately front-loads the show with its hardest-hitting segments. The first 25 minutes are stuffed with excellent jokes about big, serious, large-scale issues. The rush for hospital beds during the pandemic, the persecution of religious minorities in India, the etymology and implications of a slur; Fernandes delivers well-crafted jokes about all of these and more. And then, once he has the audience firmly on his side, Alive and Vaccinated becomes a more intimate show, extracting hilarity from noticeably ‘smaller’ things (like the vagaries of ‘sliding into’ one’s DMs).

For an experienced and confident performer like Fernandes, eschewing the warm-up stuff is a smart strategy. He opens with a pitch-perfect routine aimed at the central government’s handling of the pandemic, in particular the second wave with its widespread shortages of hospital beds, ventilators et al.

“I don’t know if you noticed,” Fernandes says, “But a lot of people were unhappy with the way the government was handling the pandemic. Not me, I love the government!” Fernandes pauses here with a suitably shit-eating grin, before he continues. “I like everything they do. I buy all their merch. That’s right, I’m wearing something orange tonight. You can’t see it but it’s there.”

There’s so much to like here: the expertly performed pause, the all-round insouciance, the aggressively on-point bit about ‘all their merch’. The “I love the government” line reminded me of British comedian Joe Lycett’s expert skewering of a BBC anchor in October, when he declared he’s “incredibly right-wing” before making fun of then-PM Liz Truss (whom the anchor was trying to defend rather desperately). The dry Brit-comedy tone that Fernandes uses here works perfectly for this segment—and, as he reminds the audience, it keeps his lawyer happy.

His routine about the slur ‘ricebag’—typically hurled at Indian Christians—was perhaps my favourite part of the show. I particularly enjoyed the relaxed, aw-shucks way he starts it, saying that as a comedian he appreciated the hard work that went into “destroying someone’s soul”. In this particular case, however, the insult doesn’t work at a semantic level, Fernandes suggests. This hilarious analogy is offered up as the explanation.

“Hypothetically, if your mom left your dad for a few bags of rice who would you ask questions of: your mom or your dad? I mean what kind of an asshole was your father, how was he treating her?”

There’s something very polished and effortless about the way Fernandes plays the crowd. And by that, I don’t mean crowd work in the classical sense, which is one-on-one engagement with audience members. I mean the way skilled comedians read the room and steer the audience towards a particular viewpoint—which the punch line can then amplify, caricature or even demolish.

Like when Fernandes is making fun of “motivational influencers”, he delivers the following three lines (comedy happens in threes). Each line is followed by applause, and Fernandes lets the audience “sit with the line for a bit”.

“All of your dreams won’t come true. Most of your lives will fall apart. Some of you won’t even make it to Christmas.” Fernandes begins the first line with a common-sense, conciliatory voice before his tone becomes progressively darker—that’s how you play the crowd like a pro. Similarly, a dark routine about older people getting vaxxed first (“I mean, Woodstock was a long time ago, what plans do they have now?”) features a very strategic pause. Fernandes segues into a mini-rant about how “at least some of your parents fucked you up properly”. Once he’s done, he jumps back into the bit. “Now that you’re all on my side, let’s talk about how old people were getting the vaccine first”.

At some level this is narrative 101 stuff. But you’d be surprised at how many A-list comedians continue to squat in the A-lounge, blissfully unaware of techniques like this one.

It’s nice to see the fundamentals being demonstrated so elegantly.

Alive and Vaccinated sees Daniel Fernandes delivering some of his strongest work. As a writer and as a performer, he appears to be close to his peak. His material offers something for everybody and yet, seldom feels over-simplified—itself an impressive feat.