Jerrod Carmichael’s ‘Rothaniel,’ as Moving as It Is Funny, Shows a Comedian Stepping Into His Own Shoes: TV Review

The moment Jerrod Carmichael tells an audience that he’s gay for the first time in his life stretches into an impossibly long silence, until someone finally lets out a tentative “whoo!” from a corner of the room. As director Bo Burnham stays close on Carmichael’s face, the comedian doesn’t exactly smile, nor heave some obvious sigh of relief. But he does absorb the reaction: tentatively, at first, until he shifts into an even slightly more comfortable position he can assume until leaving on his own terms.In “Rothaniel,” which premiered April 1 on HBO, Carmichael walks an astonishingly...