Flight of the Conchords: My New Favourite Laugh
Dashing to finish my book, I've been letting several shows pile up on my PVR, hoping to get to them later, and one of those is HBO's new show, Flight of the Conchords (airing on TMN Sunday nights at 10:30pm). Flight of the Conchords is a New Zealand duo who have been making audiences laugh for years at their crazy songs -- they tour, just the two of them, and sit on stage with their guitars and sing about love, issues, and racist dragons. HBO first brought them to the public's eye in 2005 with their brief special, One Night Stand, that became so hugely requested on the network they asked if they could spin it into a comedy show. Here's a clip from that stage show (how they don't make each other laugh is beyond me):



The series is about the duo -- Jemaine and Bret -- trying to make it in the U.S., but not having much luck. They have one RABID fan who follows them around and seems to show up wherever they are, and knows everything about them (her husband sits in the car with her, idling outside restaurants for hours so she can run over and talk to them and pretend she just happened to be there). The two have inane conversations that will have you in stitches:
"Fleetwood Mac used to be really huge."
"Yeah... Rumours."
"No, fact."

In the middle of the action, suddenly they begin singing directly into the camera, and the show turns into a bad '80s video, and the result is brilliant. Here's a clip of the first time it happens in the pilot episode. Just listen to the lyrics of this song, and you'll get the perfect idea of what the show is like (Bret has a beard now and shorter hair):



Their manager seems to work for the New Zealand embassy, with all these posters around him that aren't quite raving about it. They sit in his wood-panelled office complaining to him that they need to have more gigs, while behind him you see a picture of a green mountain that simply says, "New Zealand -- Just Like Lord of the Rings." Behind them is another one, with blue water, and it says, "New Zealand: Don't Expect Much. You Will Love It." He goes to a shop to buy a video camera, misunderstands when the guy asks him what his budget is -- "What, I was supposed to bring a budget? It's got a lot of confidential information on it, you know... you need to see my annual budget before you'll sell me a camcorder?" -- and ends up buying a camera phone, on which he records their video. The result is laugh-out-loud hilarious.

From weird things going on in the background, to the genius lyrics, to the great deadpan acting of the main duo, Flight of the Conchords is the perfect show with which to spend the summer months. I love it!