None of Greg Gulman's HBO special The Great Depresh should be funny, but it really, really is

Vulture

Gulman recounts his battles with depression in his very personal special, premiering Saturday. The special, says Kathryn VanArendonk, is really, really funny. "The Great Depresh is also sad and serious and dark, and it involves a few long periods in which Gulman sustains the thread of his story without reaching for moments of laughter," she adds. "He lingers on some of the lowest moments of his life. He talks about contemplating suicide. He talks about thinking his comedy career was over. He talks about his sense of shame." Ultimately, she says, the special is "proof of the idea that a story about getting better — a story about one guy recovering and an entire culture of mental health-related shame diminishing — can also be a funny story."

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• The Great Depresh is a portrait of an ordinary man, his well-earned triumph, and his desire to make living easier for others who are in despair
• Gary Gulman is the rare middle-aged standup that celebrates sensitivity -- he comes in praise of the snowflake
• Gulman says “I’ve always wanted to talk about my experience with depression" in a special, but worried he didn’t personally have “the skill to pull it off"
• Gulman says The Great Depresh is like a miracle: "I normally can’t watch anything I do, but I was so happy the first time we watched it all the way through, with the documentary footage and the music, I wept. It was like a death — it was like a living death that was haunting my life for two and a half years. And then, suddenly and dramatically, my mood changed and I became alive again and I was able to write all this stuff and get it out there. It feels like a miracle, and I pinch myself a lot."