the boosh

[dirkfunk]

anyone here like the work of messr's fielding and barret aka
noel fielding and julian barrett

[Jemble Fred]

Been trying to jolly along a thread about these on NotBBC - I'd like to hear a few detailed opinions, as I only know what I can glean from their websites and fansites. They seem absolutely awful, but I'm hoping to be impressed when they make their proper TV  debut.

[dirkfunk]

not holding out much hope myself

but noel fielding used to be a good silly weird stand up
and i have liked Julian barrett for a long time.
julian barrett has been in too many things in some shape or form

[Darrell]

They are absolutely bone-wrenchingly dreadful. I saw the TV pilot and I was practically on the floor in tears by the end, such was its awfulness. From that they got a full-budget 10 episode commission, which is utterly ridiculous - who else gets that?

They're blatant R&M plagiarists too - the TV pilot completely nicked the 'man under the ice' bit from The Smell.

Basically, if that Russell Brand pilot made you vomit, so will The Boosh. They're cut from the same merkin.

[Jemble Fred]

Go and tell NotBBC, Darrell, before they start canonising the pair. While you're at it, help me deal with this cunt on the Cracker thrread there.

[alan strang]

I saw The Boosh live at the Hen & Chickens in Islington several years back. Garth Marenghi was the support that night. I'll leave you to guess whether or not I considered it a wasted evening.

Their radio series won the coveted 'Douglas Adams Award for Innovative Comedy Writing' several years back - an acolade which was conveniently invented after Adams had died. Does anyone know if other shows have received the honour, or was it just invented as a PR exercise to push one show? I can't find any non-Boosh references to the award on Google.

[Jemble Fred]

Bump Happy Today

These trailers have me worried. They don't make the show look good, but they do make it look very much like they'll be declared a massive success, as a horde of pubescent girls cream themselves to the one with the stupid haircut, and everyone who cares about decent British comedy dies a little bit more inside..

Anyone got any other views on Barrett & Fielding? Will they DARE to show this series to a live audience? Will it be the Goodies tribute it claims to be, or the dire cross between Red Dwarf and Vic & Bob that it looks like? If I had my way, I'd like it so much it would stop me from writing and performing comedy NOW, feeling I couldn't compete. That is what I'm waiting for. It would save me a fortune, as well as leaving me to lead my life without constantly worrying about not performing enough. Come on, Boosh! Impress me, please!

[Darrell]

The pilot was shown to a sycophantic audience and had an additional, very loud canned laughter track put on too. It meant applause was added after more or less every single line - a ridiculously obvious attempt to 'prove' it would be popular.

Apparently they're not having a laugh track on the series at all.

It'll fall into the League of Gentlemen category - most of its fans are teenage girls only interested in the bare arses of the participants. A shame for LoG (as on the whole they're a fantastic comedy team), but it's all the Boosh deserve.

The saddest thing of all will be everyone praising it as 'this year's cult hit' and everything. It'll be a "huge triumph" and similar shite. Cue comedy awards, gushing sycophancy, Jonathan Ross interview, best-selling DVD, second series, cinema film, death of comedy.

[Purple Tentacle]

The pilot was shown to a sycophantic audience and had an additional, very loud canned laughter track put on too.

I'm not intentionally trying to trip you up, but I thought you said, many times, very adamantly, that they never use canned laughter ever?

Or are you simply referring to taking the laughter from one joke and copying 'n' pasting over all the shite ones?

[Darrell]

The pilot was shown to a sycophantic audience and had an additional, very loud canned laughter track put on too.

I'm not intentionally trying to trip you up, but I thought you said, many times, very adamantly, that they never use canned laughter ever?

I will have been referring to canned laughter on its own. The boosting of muted laugh tracks with canned is quite common, though the Boosh's track wasn't even remotely quiet - they were just being arrogant.

[Almost Yearly]

These trailers have me worried.

Fuck yeah.

Basically, if that Russell Brand pilot made you vomit, so will The Boosh. They're cut from the same merkin.

A-a-and it's all over.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

I'm sure I've seen this already. Has it been on BBC3?

I already hate Noel "Annoying Fucker" Fielding, in everything I've seen him.  From memory his "jokes" go something like this:

"Wouldn't it be great if all the badgers got together and decided to become postmen - all our post would arrive at 2am. Of course that would annoy the foxes because they wanted that job themselves.  Instead they'd have to become milkmen.  But they'd be really greedy and drink all the milk and they'd be sacked and have to go to the job centre which would be staffed by moles.  Wouldn't that be great?"

That's the fellow isn't it?

[Jemble Fred]

Certainly sounds right from the reviews I've found. Except those reviews would use a quote like that to prove this guy's GENIUS. I still haven't seen or heard any of the Mighty Boosh, and I was hoping that it would be truly great, for some reason. As it is I'm going to have to keep on bloody writing and performing my own stuff. When someone genuinely decent comes along in British Comedy, give us a nudge and I'll happily stop.

[Mister Six]

When's this on the telly, then? I'm completely out of touch with comedy these days (which seems to be a good thing, to be honest).

[lazyhour]

Well, I liked Julian Barrett in Asylum.  His character was my favourite in the show.  The other fellow seems a bit talentless though.

Yeah, I've got nothing to add.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

They did the contractually obliged 'incongrous-80s-hit-sung-solemnly' gag that all comedy shows have to have these days in order to fill up three minutes of screen time. Nighty Night did 'Lavender', Boosh did 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'.

Imagine the sight of Richard Ayoade (yes, he was in it) with his stupid chancer face humming 'Turn around...', all on field-removed video, coupled with the threat of Noel Fielding doing at least 400 more whimcal animal juxtapositions by the time the show ends. That gives you some idea how far down the pit of hell the pilot was.

[Jemble Fred]

Well, having said that, it's interesting to note that the RT reviewers says that they found the pilot 'hilarious', but described the actual series as 'unfunny surreality-by-numbers'. Have they started employing writers who can see beyond the BBC3 press releases?

[Jemble Fred]

A gentle wind of change
With a whimsical, family-friendly show, the boys from the Boosh are flying in the face of modern comedy. Bruce Dessau reports
Sometimes a comedy comes along that goes brilliantly against the flow. Reeves and Mortimer did it in the early 1990s, marking the end of the right-on era and the dawn of postmodern music hall surrealism. The Office did it a decade later, taking the gritty realism of the docusoap to its gloriously absurd conclusion. And now, with the small-screen grotesquerie of Nighty Night and Little Britain sweeping the nation, The Mighty Boosh arrives with a huge grin on its face, feeling like a veritable hurricane of fresh, uncynical air.
The creation of the Perrier-nominated performers Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, this picaresque oddity charts the adventures of two hapless zookeepers. This Tuesday, for instance, Howard Moon (Barratt) is railroaded into boxing with a kangaroo, with Vince Noir (Fielding) as his trainer. It might be in a late-night BBC Three slot, but you could just as easily screen the fun as Sunday afternoon family fare.
Fielding, all excitable pixie demeanour and primped rock'n'roll hair, is delighted with this suggestion. "It has childlike honesty and innocence." Their phantasmagorical baby is the antithesis of the meta-realism of The Office. "It doesn't look like a documentary, it doesn't make you cringe. I love that stuff, too, but it's not what the Boosh is about. I'm more into The Arabian Nights."
The more languid Barratt, who has a moustache and a sideline as a straight actor, appearing in Lucky Break with James Nesbitt and The Reckoning with Willem Dafoe, thinks it has junior appeal, too: "I used to like watching The Goodies with my Dad when I was young. I like the idea of every generation being able to get something out of it. I think we have combined lots of different elements." Sometimes there is so much going on in the programme that it is hard to contextualise it. The Boosh are undeniably the children of Vic and Bob, but the lineage is more complex. The Leeds-born Barratt also loves Frank Zappa, jazz and Monty Python. "Zappa wrote a lot of music about the tundra and in one episode we go to the Arctic."
Fielding wanted to be a footballer when he was growing up in South London, but then he discovered art and European cinema. "I wanted it to be a cross between Jean Cocteau and The Singing Ringing Tree."
The duo got together in the mid-1990s, having heard about each other's quirky activities on the stand-up circuit. Fielding popped up at a poetry night in Chalk Farm at which Barratt was performing and they bonded. At one point they were going to call themselves different names each week, splutters Fielding between bites of baguette: "Hot Lego Wolves, Swan Priests. Lovepopes. But then we stuck with The Mighty Boosh. My brother Michael used to have really big hair and his friend used to call it a mighty bush."
After three acclaimed Edinburgh shows, their radio transition picked up a Douglas Adams Award for Innovative Writing, which was particularly flattering because Fielding and Barratt were big fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "I like that overarching narrative going through various characters," says Barratt. BBC Three commissioned a pilot that went out last May and spawned the series, produced by Baby Cow (Steve Coogan's production company, outlined in THE EYE's profile last week).
Their biggest challenge was cramming all their ideas into eight 28-minute episodes. The first yarn alone takes in the aforementioned kangaroo punch-up, a love interest for Howard, the safari-suited zoo manager Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher) explaining how he doesn't like cricket via a rendition of 10cc's Dreadlock Holiday, an Aboriginal dream sequence and the kind of goofball whimsy that Hope and Crosby used to specialise in in their Road To . . . movies.
"The challenge was balancing the comedy and the story. We were interested in narrative and making the weirdness work within a storyline," says Barratt. They considered using other writers, but nobody was quite on their wavelength. "We have certain rules about levels of wrongness and stupidity, although we don't know what they are."
They painstakingly piece everything together themselves. The quickfire Ali-style opening banter for instance ("I'll come at you fast like a northen bullet . . . like being caressed by a natural yoghurt") might sound spontaneous but it is all scripted, explains Fielding. It can sometimes be a struggle to come up with the perfect surreal one-liner. "The battle goes one way then another, like trying to get through a narrow gap. When we agree it's like, 'yes, we're in!'" The result is deliriously funny but as difficult to pin down as a will-o'-the-wisp. Even its creators are not sure if they've come up with a sitcom. "That's hard. Is Mr Benn a sitcom?" muses Fielding. "It is set in the same place and we play the same characters, but anything can happen. We're not trapped, which is supposed to be a sitcom law. We weren't that interested in the detailed lives of zookeepers."
The Mighty Boosh, Tuesday, BBC Three, 10.30pm

That made it sound good. But perhaps Bruce Dessau has become evil.

[alan strang]

That made it sound good. But perhaps Bruce Dessau has become evil.

Bruce Dessau is hardly going to slag it though, considering his position.

The Leeds-born Barratt also loves Frank Zappa, jazz and Monty Python.

I love all three and I hate The Mighty Boosh with a passion.

'Zappa wrote a lot of music about the tundra and in one episode we go to the Arctic.'

Barratt isn't fit to visit Frank Zappa's grave incognito. How dare he willingly feed such a journalistic comparison. In any case, Zappa only ever really wrote one song 'about the tundra': 'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow' from the album 'Apostrophe'. The whole piece lasts about 15 minutes.

After three acclaimed Edinburgh shows, their radio transition picked up a Douglas Adams Award for Innovative Writing, which was particularly flattering because Fielding and Barratt were big fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Why hasn't Dessau questioned the veracity of this 'award'?

'The challenge was balancing the comedy and the story. We were interested in narrative and making the weirdness work within a storyline,' says Barratt. They considered using other writers, but nobody was quite on their wavelength. 'We have certain rules about levels of wrongness and stupidity, although we don't know what they are.'

Jesus Christ...

[Rats]

Ah, I've liked that Noel Fielding bloke whenever I've seen him doing stand up. I've not read anything about this but it might be good.

[GeeTee]

Oh dear....two shows in a row on premiered on BBC3...didnt they think one would be enough torture or do they want to rush release this turd so it can be stuck on BBC2 ASAP to impress its 12yr old target audience...sub-Goodies/sub-Young Ones/Sub-Mike Myers at his worst/sub-Catterick/Sub-League Of Gentlemen...another pile of BBC3 shite created by a "dark but surreal" focus group....

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

It's also got that 'non sequitur simile' disease that's infecting all comedy these days, from Two Pints to Black Books. 'Oh no, my hair's gone weird...like a bad hen' - that sort of shit. Who started all that, does anyone know?

[MattH]

It's worth watching just for classy Victoria Wicks being in it! Nice to see her around again, she is pretty good in this too.

[king mob]

Review from todays Guardian

Knowing my taste in comedy, The Mighty Boosh (BBC3) will probably be the nation's favourite within six months, quoted in playground and parliament alike. I remained stonily unamused. Criticising a new comedy show is about as sporting as shooting fish in a barrel, but in this case the fish had it coming. The Mighty Boosh tried to be surreal and weird, but kept tripping over its awkward writing style ("You're about as edgy as a satsuma") and its self-congratulatory performance tone. There was a promising pastiche of The Island of Lost Souls in the second of the two introductory episodes, but it quickly degenerated into a lame musical number with breakdancing mutants, which looks funnier on paper than it really was.

There was one good visual joke about a moving shrub, but one laugh in an hour doesn't do it for me. But what do I know about comedy? I can't stand Only Fools and Horses either.

source

[TJ]

'Zappa wrote a lot of music about the tundra and in one episode we go to the Arctic.'

Barratt isn't fit to visit Frank Zappa's grave incognito. How dare he willingly feed such a journalistic comparison. In any case, Zappa only ever really wrote one song 'about the tundra': 'Don't Eat The Yellow Snow' from the album 'Apostrophe'. The whole piece lasts about 15 minutes.

"Syd Barrett had a song called 'Terrapin' and I saw a Terrapin at the zoo once so I'm obviously on a par with him".


Or, if you read Smash Hits in 1986, "hey, my neighbours had a rabbit called Billy once, so that's a bit of a cw'incidence, innit?".

[Jemble Fred]

Has the Guardian turned the corner?

The Times loved it in their weekend preview.

I think this will be a success. I think that will upset all right-minded comedy fans.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Aw, he cops out in the last two sentences - leaves a get-out clause lest the show becomes incredibly popular.

Otherwise, he's right.

(Edit: I'm talking about the Guardian review, not Jemble Fred's post.)

[Purple Tentacle]

Fucking hell, after reading that Guardian review I can only conclude that this Boosh thing is a work of unparallelled genius, given Guardian's Inverse Law of Comedy Reviews.

Luckily I haven't got digital so I haven't seen it yet....

[benthalo]

Could someone explain The Goodies comparison please? I spent an hour struggling to work it out last night.

[Pilf]

It just seemed to fall into the 'trying too hard' category, and consequently wasn't a laugh a minute and some bits just made you shake your head and think "relax, stop trying to be wierd as that just wasn't funny", but I didn't think it was awful and there was a chance it could pick up. A hell of a lot of comedy over recent years has fallen into that category.