Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 7

So that was series 1 of Luxury Comedy was it?  I can’t wait for series 2 (yes I can)!

I have always found Noel Fielding to be a funny guy.  Like most people, I first heard of him as one half of The Mighty Boosh, where he worked alongside Julian Barratt, doing live shows, then radio and TV shows for the BBC.  I even worked in Borders when they did a book signing and I saw them and everything, it was quite exciting.  Although The Boosh has been away for a while, I enjoyed Bunny And The Bull, a comedy directed by another Boosh alumni, Paul King, and featuring cameos by Noel and Julian.  I like Noel’s solo stand up too, it’s very weird and out there, but somehow funny at the same time.

But unfortunately, his solo TV show has been an unruly mess.  With a seemingly endless cast of odd looking new characters, very little of the show has actually worked out, with laughs being few and far between.  Episode 7 was more of the same, hardly anything to laugh about, but a colourful show that almost hurts the eyes to watch.

There’s a Brian/Bryan fight between Ferry (with a kite for a head) and Eno (who is a Frisbee with magnetic humus on one side), which only serves to remind you of the Ferry sighting in The Hitcher episode of the Boosh, with Julian Barratt as the Roxy Music singer, living in the forest and looking strangely like Terry Wogan.

Joey Ramone claims to have conjunctivitis and he isn’t crying when he’s missed a bus to get to CBGB’s and can’t afford a taxi, while Fantasy Man travels into The Valley Of The Chavs, where he works out some anger issues with the chavs who call him a batty boy and slag off his foam cup beard.  And the series comes to an end with a disastrous barbeque, where we discover that Noel always has a breakdown when he tries to cook the sausages, and that all the characters in the show are figments of his imagination.

E4 has already renewed the show for a second series, but it’s hard to see why.  It just wasn’t funny enough, and although Fielding has a lot of very loyal fans, I find it hard to believe that they have really enjoyed the show and have been left wanting more.  The shows blend of live action, animation, music and mayhem never quite works, and I don’t see how series 2 could be any better unless Fielding rips up the script and starts from scratch.  So I think I’ll skip the second series, and just re-watch some classic Boosh.  I recommend you do the same.

@TheGlassCase

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 6

Before Luxury Comedy started in January, I didn’t really know much about it.  I’d seen the billboards around town, and it looked distinctly Boosh-esque, only without Julian Barratt.  I quite enjoyed the first three episodes, it was a bit out there, but there were a few decent laughs in each episode.  But episode 4 was a disaster, and episode 5 wasn’t much better.

There are multiple problems with the show, the biggest of which is that it just isn’t that funny.  There are one or two laughs in each episode, but it’s mostly an unfunny, colourful mess of a show.  And there’s an over-reliance on Noel’s part on jokes about bumming, rape and sexual diseases.  Episode 6 features a running gag about a tiger with Chlamydia (it spreads it with a giant red arrow penis), which stretches out to feature creatures that spread lupus, typhoid and shin splints, before Sergeant Boombox reveals he can give people perms to force them to join the NYPD.  Talking of Boombox, he recalls the case of the Brooklyn Ice Box Throttler, who fingers himself after committing his crimes.  Dondylion also has problems, as Andy Warhol as (sigh) Allan Key reveals that if Dondylion doesn’t escape the zoo he’s in, he’ll get lion AIDS and die horribly.

The one good thing about episode 6 is Tony Reason, the manta ray record producer, who makes multiple appearances in the show, and is joined by a friend of his, a hammerhead shark voiced by Richard Ayoade, and the pair discuss ginger drummers, Sting and blonde bands, white men doing reggae and Phil Collins.  It’s stupid, but Ayoade and Noel work well together, with their languid storytelling style adding to the comedy.

But apart from that, it’s just painfully unfunny.  Joey Ramone is back, and things go wrong for him when he takes an oatcake from his grandma, forgetting he has a wheat allergy.  Roy Circles rambles on about something, and Noel gets Chlamydia while doing a bad Australian accent.

Thankfully there’s only one more show in the series.  I don’t know what the ratings for the show are like, but I find it hard to believe that it is gaining any week by week.  For every laugh the show creates, there are 5 scenes that just aren’t funny at all.  Noel Fielding clearly has a head filled with lots of ideas, but he’s unable to pick out the best ones and just throws everything on screen.  Unfortunately that results in a low success rate, making Luxury Comedy a forgettable show that will only serve to remind people how good The Mighty Boosh is, and make them wish that Noel and Julian would get the band back together sooner rather than later.

@TheGlassCase

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 5

Episode 4 was a low point for Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy.  The first three episodes of the show had been very inconsistent, with some very funny sketches mixed in with ideas that just didn’t work.  But the fourth episode had little going for it.  Aside from a Boosh-like opening sketch, the rest of the episode was a disaster, with poor new characters, and unfunny appearances from previously introduced ones.

Unfortunately, episode 5 is another poor episode.  The problem Luxury Comedy has is that the majority of sketches are just Noel wearing brightly coloured face paint, and spouting gibberish.  While there was plenty of that in The Mighty Boosh, there was also a self-contained plot in each episode, plus Vince Noir and Howard Moon, two relatively normal people to move the story along.  Luxury Comedy doesn’t have that, and while Noel sitting in his home has a running sketch throughout the show, the resolution of those at the end of each show rarely makes sense.

So in episode 5, there’s a mostly purple guy singing randomly about mashed potato and fish fingers, while Mike Fielding appears as his sidekick with a racing car driving over his hair.  There’s Iain Gauge, who has croissants on his face, and sings to toast, asking ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Non’ is the answer.

Sergeant Boombox, the cop with talking bullet holes on his arm, features heavily in the episode, having his own adventure with his nemesis, Count Ziggenpuss attempting to steal a ruby covered diamond the size of a cat’s head.  He also plays tennis with Iain, while Secret Peter umpires (before the ice cream van comes), then has a standoff with Noel, after an animated dolphin fighter pilot has dropped a bomb that Noel decides to nurture as a baby, which is subsequently revealed to be Boombox’s nephew.

Richard Ayoade turns up again as City Gent, blaming Ice Cream Eyes for the falling standards in education, but you wonder why he bothers.  Ayoade can and does do much better, having directed one of 2011’s best movies, Submarine.  So why is he turning up for a couple of minutes in a mostly poor show?

There are some good moments in the episode though.  Dondylion returns, his desperate positivity exposed again, as the sadly admits that the letters he’s sending home to his mother aren’t going anywhere, and his cellmate Ravi (Mike as a mentally challenged chimp) isn’t as clever as he’d hoped.  Roy Circles, the chocolate finger, relates a story about his time in South Africa which is quite funny, and the best line is reserved for a stuffed squirrel pointing a gun at Noel.

But for a show that lasts just over 20 minutes, three fairly decent sketches isn’t enough.  It’s clear that E4 have left Fielding alone to do whatever he likes with Luxury Comedy, but it is also clear that he has no quality control.  The worry is that the show gets progressively worse, and E4 find themselves regretting already renewing the show for a second series.  It would certainly surprise me if viewing figures were improving.

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 4

Up to now, I’ve been enjoying Luxury Comedy.  Noel Fielding’s head is clearly filled with a million ideas, and most of them are, well, a bit odd.  While there was plenty of oddness about The Mighty Boosh, there were also two great central characters, Howard Moon and Vince Noir, to build each episode around.  In Luxury Comedy, there’s Noel himself, with a painted face, who lives in an open plan hut on top of a tree.  While he’ll have something to do that the show will check in on throughout, the rest of the show is made up of sketches with various characters.

So in the first three episodes, it was a bit all over the place.  There were so many characters crammed into the show that it was difficult to keep track of them all, but there was the occasional sketch that hit the mark.  The show started to find its feet and I thought episode 3 was the best so far.  But episode 4?  Not so much.

The episode did get off to a good start, with Martin Rogers, Noel’s estate agent (and a monkey), sitting with Noel, who tells us that they wrote the show together, and bought matching glowing headbands from Mark Knopfler (from Dire Straits).  Martin then announces that Noel touches him in the night-times, which Noel isn’t happy about because his mum watches.

But after that, it was the worst episode of the series so far.  Noel gets a call from Secret Peter, and finds out he is on Peter’s game show, which airs on Channel Boomboom (don’t ask).  He’s won a prize, and can choose between a banana, a speedboat, and a speedboat made of bananas.  The latter is the prize Noel wins, which happens to be the worst prize.  Secret Peter then shows Noel a version of his fantasy about having a speedboat, which features Dan Clark (Johnny Two-Hats from the Electro episode of the Boosh).

Joey Ramone is back, this time with his mum at the beach.  Joey is a bit body conscious, but the Scottish narrator persuades him to go in the sea anyway.  Elsewhere in the show, Smooth and Andy are making cakes that look like things, Dolly and Smooth are doing judo but Noel can’t join them, there’s a skate who producers records and has a story about how he got Bon Jovi to sing Living On A Prayer, and Fantasy Man has another adventure.

But the show’s nadir comes in the form of a bizarre (and utterly unfunny) sketch featuring Noel and his brother Mike as weird aliens who come to earth make weird noises and collect Panini stickers.  Even by the shows out there standards, the sketch is nonsense, and is way too long.

The first three episodes of Luxury Comedy were inconsistent, but each has had a few good sketches.  Episode four only really had Martin Rogers going for it, and that was pre-credits.  To keep the show worth watching, Noel Fielding is going to have to dump some of his ideas and concentrate on a handful of the best, otherwise it’s going to be too inconsistent to really become a good show.

@TheGlassCase

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 3

It only took 2 episodes before E4 renewed Luxury Comedy for a second series.  Although it feels like the show is still finding its feet, the channel has moved quickly to secure another 6 episodes, with Noel promising that the second series will be ‘more like a Wednesday morning’, claiming he wants push things further and make something even more out there next time.

It’s actually hard to see how he could do that, with the series already showcasing a large amount of wild and weird characters, with the promise of more to come in the rest of series 1.

Episode 3 kicks off with a good example of just how out there Luxury Comedy is.  Noel and his butler Smooth (an anteater) are complaining about a tutting mountain.  He’s not a fan of the show, but instead of leaving, he just sits there tutting, so Noel teaches him a lesson by giving him a hot teaspoon on the cheek.  But the thing is, even episode 3 gets more out there as it goes on.

Elsewhere, a plasticine Joey Ramone has his legs cut off, then sees one of them used by Colin Montgomerie as a putter, as he wins the Masters.  Dolly falls in love with a security hat, while Andy Warhol might be stealing Noel’s Fabs.  Richard Ayoade (who appeared as Dixon Bainbridge in the Boosh pilot, and then as Saboo after the show began on BBC2) makes his first appearance of the series too, as ‘City Gent’, and there’s also an appearance by Kim Noble, who has previously appeared alongside Ayoade in Darkplace.  He appears in the longest sketch of the show, featuring Fantasy Man (a character with blue sellotape eyebrows and facial hair), and his sidekick Big Chief Woolabum Boomalackaway, who can see 15 minutes into the future (if he does poppers first).  Fantasy Man’s adventures are narrated by someone who is rather more interested in checking his emails than actually finding out what Fantasy Man is doing this week, but it turns out he has to repair a tear between youtube and youporn, or all sorts of filth will be on the loose.

While episode 3 has a lot going on again, with even more new characters introduced, it is more structured than the previous two episodes, with Noel explaining how to travel by television, and dealing with the tutting mountains throughout.  The show is still inconsistent, and even the lengthy Fantasy Man sketch has good and bad points.

But the positives still outweigh the negatives in Luxury Comedy.  If Noel limits the number of sketches per show and ties them altogether like he does in the latest episode, the show will be all the better for it, and it may prove E4 right to sign up for more.

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 2

It is usually difficult to judge a comedy show based on its first episode.  There are characters to be introduced, style to be established and a tone to be set.  In the first episode of Noel Fielding’s latest show, there was an abundance of colours and characters and styles, and the whole thing seemed bewildering and ramshackle, even to someone like me, who loves The Mighty Boosh and is used to all the unusual elements that make that show so great.

Normally the second episode of a comedy show continues where the first left off, and you start to get a handle on the characters and their stories.  But episode 2 of Luxury Comedy is every bit as confusing and odd as the first.  There’s a whole new set of characters being introduced, with few carrying over from the first show.  Fielding’s throwing everything into the show, and some of it works and some of it doesn’t.  The show is very hit and miss, with some of the material just being too ‘out there’ to make sense.

But despite the shows shortcomings, I can’t help but like it.  A scene with another Boosher, Rich Fulcher, in which he plays an ageing man celebrating his birthday with Fielding dressed as err, something, is strange but develops into a great musical number before God appears (as a kind of multi-pointed star), chastising Fulcher’s character for summoning beasts to party with, before accepting a party bag, not for him, but for Jesus.  It’s completely bizarre, but somehow works, and that’s the great thing, AND the bad thing about the show.

For everything that works, there’s something that doesn’t, but Fielding doesn’t seem to really care.  He’s totally in control of everything that happens in the show, it’s his artwork, his writing and his music, albeit co-written with Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno.  He’s got his friends (and relatives in the case of Mike Fielding) from the Boosh working with him, and they know exactly how to play the characters he creates for them.

The show is always going to be inconsistent, but when it works it can be very funny.  It won’t appeal to everyone, and anyone randomly finding it while channel hopping will be totally lost, but Luxury Comedy is a show that will get people talking.

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 1

As one half of The Mighty Boosh, Noel Fielding has enjoyed great success.  He and fellow Boosh mastermind Julian Barratt created a weird world filled with unusual characters, songs and languages.  They successfully made the transition from cult stage show to hit TV show, and have sold out live shows around the UK.  But the Boosh have been away for a few years now, and it seems like Barratt and Fielding may have drifted apart, with Fielding enjoying life on the party scene while Barratt lives a quiet life with partner Julia Davis.

Since appearing together in The Bunny And The Bull in 2010, the pair have gone their separate ways, and Fielding has been a team captain on the BBC’s Never Mind The Buzzcocks since 2009.  But now Fielding has gone to E4 and the results are Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy.

It’s safe to say that Luxury Comedy is out there.  Fielding has created a host of colourful and bizarre characters, and the look of the show is just as bewildering.  It has a random, scattershot feel, with Boosh alumni Mike Fielding (Noel’s brother, who played Naboo) and Rich Fulcher (who played Bob Fossil), appearing in various guises.  Like the Boosh, Luxury Comedy has music and animation, but it lacks the cohesive narrative that was a strong point of The Mighty Boosh.  Without Barratt, who wrote the music for The Mighty Boosh, Noel has teamed up with Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, and Pizzorno’s music is one of the few things that differentiates Luxury Comedy from Fielding’s previous work.

It’s often difficult to judge comedy shows on their first episode.  Fielding’s work is well known for being random and surreal, and Luxury Comedy is very much the same.  There aren’t many big laughs in the first episode, and most of the characters he’s created for the show feel like they could have been tossed aside during the writing stage of The Mighty Boosh.  Luxury Comedy is not going to win Fielding any new fans, and anyone watching the show without knowing about his previous work will likely have been left confused and unsure about exactly what has just happened.

It may be the case that Luxury Comedy just has too many ideas, too many things going on for it to be coherent and consistently funny.  Fielding isn’t pushing himself too hard with his new show, there’s not a lot that stands out as being markedly different from his previous work.  But while the Boosh are away, you certainly won’t see anything quite like Luxury Comedy anywhere else.