Stand-up comedians from New Zealand

New Zealand comedy still takes its bearings from an entertainer who died before most of the people working today had started. Billy T. James parodied the Māori television news in a black singlet with a yellow towel round his neck, and the towel became the trophy: the prize for the best emerging act at the country's comedy festival is handed over as a yellow towel, with the money as a footnote to it.

That festival is the spine of the year. It runs in Auckland and Wellington, turns unknown performers into bookable ones through that award, and then releases them into a country where the rooms big enough to hold a paying crowd can be counted without much effort. Television does the rest of the sorting, and the same faces move between the festival and the panel shows until they are recognised in the street.

The way up has long meant crossing to Australia, and it still does, but the traffic has changed shape. Guy Montgomery built a comedy panel format at home about spelling words wrong, then sold the format across the water and hosts both versions, so the idea emigrated while its author stayed. Rhys Darby took the other approach years earlier, building an act out of absurdism, character work and sound effects, material that needs no local reference to land and therefore needs no translation.

Who counts as a comedian from here is looser than a passport. Urzila Carlson arrived from South Africa as an adult, started on stage after she got here, and carries Afrikaans and Zulu behind the English. The register at the top of the scene is deadpan, anecdotal and observational, delivered slowly, which is a style that wants a small room where the pause is audible rather than an arena.