Tig Notaro is one of my favourite comedians. Although always an amazing, deadpan comedian, she hit the popularity rocket when she did a ground-breaking set the day after she was diagnosed with cancer. She just stood on the stage and bravely free-associated her new reality, and people were floored. Floored.

I mean, if you know her story at all, cancer was just the cherry on top. Weeks before, she’d been in the hospital in crazy pain with a life-threatening diagnosis of C-Diff. She got out of the hospital just in time to make her mother’s funeral, who’d died suddenly after a freak accident, falling in her own living room and hitting her head, a seemingly benign incident that killed her 24 hours later. Then Tig went through a break up, though moments before they’d been considering starting a family. And then: breast cancer. So it was a tumultuous few weeks, and you can only imagine her frame of mind when she wandered on stage that famous night. Although, technically you don’t have to: Louis C.K. was in the audience that night, and helped her put out an album of that set, which for obvious reasons could never be recreated.

So in the wake of her having a double mastectomy, she was suddenly very famous and a very sought-after comedian, one who now had no material since she could never re-perform the cancer bit. Crazy. Tig (the documentary) is a clever reflection upon that crazy time in her life, with the help of similarly funny, famous friends like Bill Burr and Sarah Silverman.

I love stand-up comedy. Like, LOVE love. I love how accessible comedy has become thanks in part to Netflix, but also satellite radio and Spotify – I listen to lots of podcasts in my car these days. Tig is among my favourites, and Sean and I meant to see her at Just For Laughs last year, only she cancelled her set at the last minute, but we saw other favourites of mine, like Maria Bamford, Fortune Feimster, and Carmen Esposito. This year we’re seeing Marc Maron and Fred Armisen. But as much fun as it is to see a live set, it’s such an exciting time to be able to supplement those with bonuses, of which I’d say that this documentary is most definitely one. It’s an incredible story either way, but she’s also a comedian that you just need to get into. She has a very watchable, very bingeable show as well, called One Mississippi. Maria Bamford had one called Lady Dynamite. Jim Gaffigan had one less inventively titled The Jim Gaffigan Show (do you suppose men just reflexively have to slap their names all over things?). Anyway, it tickles me to no end when comedians pop up in things, and I will continue to seek them out, because to my mind, comedy is the absolute hardest thing to get right. Comedies are largely underappreciated and downright ignored by critics and award-givers, but that’s absurd. When humour works, it unites us all in such a base, instinctual way. It’s glorious. But as you know, a lot of humour comes from pain. It takes a special talent to extract the funniness from a horrible situation.

And maybe that’s what makes Tig so special. That she was willing to use her own personal hell, her own heartbreak, not only to entertain us, but to make us whole. Comedy is healing. Laughing is medicinal. Give yourself a Tig injection; it keeps the doctor away.