After the video clip from Yaseen Kader’s toddlerhood that introduces the show (which he, quite correctly, tells us is the cutest thing we’ll see all week), he opens by telling us we have all come to watch him thanks to a series of poor life choices on our parts. This was ironic for two reasons: the first being that much of Smile could be interpreted as Kader’s own poor life choices: discussing the futility of doing the washing up as an icebreaker, paying for Freudian psychoanalysis, watching the film Look Who’s Talking at an impressionable age; sleeping through an exam. The second reason is that it’s total rubbish: going to Smile and getting absorbed in Kader’s world for an hour on a Monday night turned out to be one of the best life choices I have made in a very long time.

After an ongoing struggle with depression, Kader intermitted from Cambridge in Michaelmas of last year, and it’s this, followed by what he’s done since then, that forms the majority of content for the show. Sure, there are moments where he feels he has to warn us that what he’s going to say is sad, or isn’t particularly funny, but apart from the fact that these are often unnecessary disclaimers, they simply add to the very impressive structure of the show. He avoids ever slipping into making the audience uncomfortable through sheer confidence (although – and this is really pedantic – I could have maybe done with slightly less nervous hair-flicking). 

Perhaps since Kader is aware that he has his work cut out for him making depression funny, he lets no sentence in his show go un-mined for comic potential, whether it’s an early description of the Disney Channel star, "a serpent called Cole Sprouse", his analysis of the semantic flaws in the name of the OK Cupid dating site, or the way he transforms the "worst joke of the show" into a wonderful comparison between the terms 'benefits’ and ‘welfare.’ But crucially, Kader never makes light of the serious topic, instead demonstrating an earnest but genuinely funny outlook on his own life. 

This is a crammed show, yet no idea ever feels underdeveloped. Kader’s style is overwhelmingly endearing and natural: he could write material about anything, one feels, but this show is so much more than just chunks of material. It’s thought-provoking, exquisitely written, and doesn’t scrimp on big laughs to achieve this for even a second.