"One Night Stand" Flight of the Conchords (2005)

User Rating:

8.5/10   

Writers:

Jemaine Clement (writer)
Bret McKenzie (writer)

TV Series:

"One Night Stand" (2005)

Original Air Date:

9 September 2005 (Season 1, Episode 4)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Cast

Jemaine Clement	...	Himself (as Flight of the Conchords)
Bret McKenzie	...	Himself (as Flight of the Conchords)

Soundtrack:

Boom

Flight of the Conchords: Very funny, witty, clever and catchy musical comedy show

Ahead of showing the first season of the HBO comedy "Flight of the Conchords", BBC4 showed this episode from the "One Night Stand" show where the duo perform in front of a live audience for one night only. Noticing that this programme was made before HBO commissioned the full series as a sort of alternative situation comedy, I decided to watch them in this order and indeed while writing this I am still to start watching the series. On the basis of this one-off special though, I am looking forward to it a great deal.

The humour is a sort of folded in musical comedy that has the duo being imaginative about the ordinary as well as spoofing musical genres. There aren't really any weak spots across the thirty minute show and none of the songs were less than good. The opening awkward song about a woman meeting a man who doesn't recognise her is a good start but the "issues" song on AIDS (the cute monkey disease) is better but not as good as Business Time, which for my money is a hilarious but yet well observed telling of the reality of day-to-day relationships but set within the traditions of a funky love song.

The Racist Dragon is amusing but lacked energy due to the requirement of what they were spoofing. Conversely the "Rhyme-noceros v's Hip-hop-opotamus" is a fantastic spoof on mainstream rap music that had me hitting rewind a few times. What makes the comedy work so well is the fact that Jemaine and Bret are willing to make themselves part of the joke despite the fact they are clearly both very talented and have great singing voices – Jemaine especially showing an impressive range here.

Overall a very enjoyable thirty minutes of music. It has highs and lows but even the "lows" are still very funny and clever and, on the basis of this, I am looking forward to getting into the series itself.