Flight of the Conchords

While much of our summer television viewing awash in reality, the proverbial diamond in the rough has been HBO's new comedy and pseudo-reality-ish series, Flight of the Conchords.   

The show is named after the "fourth most popular" folk duo from New Zealand and stars Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie... as Jermaine and Bret of the band Flight of the Conchords as they try to find success in the States with a move to NYC.

It is quite the odd little series.  The guys have apparently been playing these "characters" for years (of course, all you need to know is in their Wikipedia entry)... so the show has a definite improv feel to it and the guys have their act down.  If I had to pitch it, I would say it is kind of like The Office (British version) that occasionally breaks out into song.  So that should probably tell you whether you would like it or not.

Of course, I am telling you about this quirky gem a tad late as 4 of the 12-episode run have already aired.  Though these days, I am sure there are at least a handful of ways to catch up with Conchords even if you don't subscribe to HBO (it looks like HBO puts the latest, and full, episode on their website for a limited time). 

Oh, in my still unofficial "oddly appealing men" series allow me to add Bret McKenzie (pictured, upper right) to my list.  Us gay bloggers regularly offer up the no-duh gorgeous guys, so I am still threatening to do/start this non-traditional list (you may remember, this all started when I dubbed Three Sheets host Zane Lamprey "oddly appealing").  But there is something quite adorable about Brett (pronounced with a Kiwi accent as... Brit).

The HBO site has a bunch of videos from the show for you to explore... and being no dummies, they conveniently allow you to embed them on websites... so I am falling right into their "word of mouth"/free publicity trap here.  I was torn between sharing their Pet Shop Boys-ish "Inner City Pressure"... but ultimately had to go with their brilliant pre-getting mugged Episode 3 rap of...

Hip-Hopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous (click play below)

Anyone else watching?!

Comments

[monette]

man, I love this show! I actually caught their stand-up special on HBO two years ago, and had downloaded a couple of the songs from it (incluing the hiphopapotamas one). I was so excited to hear they would get their own series, and it's just above and beyond what i expected. It seems like they are slowing intergrating a lot of the songs from that special over the course of the show, so one I'll leave you with a title (if you hadn't seen it) called "Albi the racist dragon". I can't wait for it!

[Jeff]

I'd never heard of this show before (then again, we're without cable at the moment, so that's no surprise). I just watched some of the clips and the latest episode on the HBO site. Funny stuff!

[Jeff]

P.S. And of course half the appeal for me is the accent. I can't watch it without mimicking them out loud. ;-)