NEW COMEDY

Flight of the Conchords is an HBO comedy show about two hapless New Zealand musicians trying to make it in New York. One of them (Bret aka Brit) looks like a cute version of Peter Sutcliffe and the other one (Jermain) looks like a cute version of Marcus Brigstock. Every week, there is 30 minutes of dead pan, rather repetitive comedy, where Brit and Jermain fall out over something and then they make up at the end. Last week saw the boys falling out over a girl they both liked, and competing to make her the most impressive birthday present – Jermain hand wrought her a butterfly out of glass and Brit produced an amazingly creepy painting of the girl as a bikini clad barbarian queen posing with a wolf with Brit’s face. It isn’t usually that funny though, so hopefully that was a sign that the show will broaden its wings slightly.

The main reason to watch the show is for the musical interludes. In one week, Brit and Jermain tried to fend off some muggers by taking on their rap identities (Rhyme-nocerous and Hiphop-opatumus) and rapping at them.



Later on they walk through the mean streets of NYC singing a motown style protest song that cracked me up (Sample lyrics: “Kids on the street being stabbed by knives and forks, and being called names like dork”).



I also liked Jermain’s Barry White style “It’s business time”, where he sings about treating his girl to two minutes of lovin’, in his socks. (“And then you say something sexy like “Is that it???””).



You can find all the songs on youtube (check out the David Bowie one or the Pet Shop Boys one) and I still sort of think that I am better off just doing that and not watching the program, but there are worse ways to spend a Tuesday evening, I suppose.