Flight of the Conchords - Season 1

What would you call Flight of the Conchord’s kind of comedy? Offbeat, deadpan, characterised by lack of canned laughter, revelling in social awkwardness, and of course, musical. Reminds me of Spinal Tap (naturally), British comedies like The Office and also of, strangely, Napoleon Dynamite, and it deserves to stand alongside them! All the characters are played by comedians and it shows in their use of comic timing, expressions and tone of voice - it creates a slightly ironic feel to the whole thing that is affably daft, when it can often be in other shows and movies, pretentious. It’s helped by the Conchords amusing willingness to lampoon themselves and their homeland (New Zealand) frequently.

Murray Hewitt stands out especially as the Deputy Cultural Attache to the New Zealand Consulate by day, band manager of the Conchords by… day as well. He can‘t manage them at night, the band isn‘t allowed to do gigs at night because in Murray’s words “You could get run over, pickpocketed, erm... fall down a manhole, bump into people, murdered... imagine that. Or even just ridiculed.” Every episode, Murray seems to be sitting under the Sword of Damocles trying to juggle his two jobs, the unreliable Bret and Jemaine and his on/off wife, and of course burdened by their collective yoke of ignorance.



The episodes are obviously contrived to fit around the band’s songs, not that that’s a problem! They range from straight parodies (Inner City Pressure) to completely abstract pieces (Mermaids). Naturally, fitting with the calibre of the show, they’re all clever and enjoyable, but I think the pastiches of popular songs are definitely the best. The Conchords have a keen ear for satire. In a take on (what I assume to be) Black Eyed Peas “Where is the Love?” we get delightful lyrics like: “Now there's junkies with monkey disease // Who's touching these monkeys, please // Leave these poor sick monkeys alone // They've got problems as it is”. Keeping up the quality of these amiably mocking songs will be their biggest challenge in the second season (now showing on BBC er… well, one of them).

Despite the difficulties of bending a plot to fit around very varied indeed songs, Flight of the Conchords manage to pull it off - the sitcom part of the show is smooth and well written. Besides, the songs don't need to fit exactly, the daftness is what's so endearing. Bret and Jemaine, playing Bret and Jemaine, have great charm and acting skills as parallel versions of themselves, though I admit I can’t picture either playing any other roles. Except Figwit, of course.



Flight of the Conchords is high quality throughout, with only one bad episode (their Bowie impressions aren’t as good as they think they are) out of twelve. If you have any sort of sense of humour, give this a watch! If you don’t, well, try Bremner, Bird and Fortune.

****