Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy
The latest project of British actor and comedian Noel Fielding (better known as one half of The Mighty Boosh), described by channel 4 as "a psychedelic character based comedy show half-filmed and half-animated", although really, that description barely does it justice. Released in 2012.
Each episode involves Noel - playing an exaggerated version of himself - his friend Dolly, his aardvark butler Smooth and his cleaner Andy Warhol having various bizarre adventures in Noel's jungle home. Added to this are numerous sketches, cartoons and musical interludes, often entirely unrelated to the main plot, involving such characters as Sergeant Raymond Boombox (an incompetent New York cop with a talking knife-wound on his left arm) Roy Circles (an anthropomorphic chocolate biscuit with disturbing racist tendencies) and Noel's landlord Secret Peter (a brain-damaged purple blob with a passion for tennis).
In short...it's very, very odd.
- Abnormal Ammo: The angry dolphin in a fighter jet fires pasta bullets at Noel's house
- Amazing Technicolour Population: Sgt Boombox's skin is neon yellow for some strange reason.
- Anthropomorphic Food: Count Ziggenpuss the singing fishfinger and Roy Circles the depressed chocolate biscuit are the most notable examples. Then there are characters like Ice-Cream Eyes and Ian Guage (the singer with croissants all over his face) who seem to be human-food hybrids.
- Aside Glance
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Ian Guage, Noel's tribute to Jacques Brel, sings in faux-French gibberish.
- Ass Shove: Apparently Tony Reason's method of familiarising himself with a new work colleague is to insert his finger into that person's anus. That said, Tony doesn't even have fingers, so Lord knows how he manages it.
- Attractive Bent Gender: Apparently Andy Warhol is this when he masquerades as Frida Kahlo. Although it's plainly just Andy in drag, Smooth still seems to fancy him.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Noel's feud with King Tutta the mountain has shades of this. Throughout the episode a distant mountain keeps tutting and looking disgusted every time Noel makes a joke. Noel retaliates by scorching the mountain's cheek with a hot teaspoon, but later realises he was actually tutting because he was performing a capella with some other mountains, at which point Noel apologises and admits to being "slightly in love" with King Tutta.
- Big Eater: Sgt. Boombox, who regularly stops for a snack while apprehending criminals.
- Big No: Boombox has one when he lets his nemesis Count Ziggenpuss escape.
- Black Comedy: Some sketches border on this, none more so than those involving Dondylion.
- Braids, Beads, and Buckskins: Big Chief Woolabum Boomalackaway.
- Cargo Ship: Dolly and her curious attraction to Noel's security hat. Also, Secret Peter is married to a peanut.
- Civilized Animal: What with anthropomorphism being a massive staple of the show this crops up quite a lot, particularly with Tony Reason - the successful music producer who just happens to be a stingray. Pretty much every animal who appears on the show is sapient to one degree or another, and many inanimate objects can inexplicably talk.
- Cloudcuckoolander: It would probably be easier to name the characters who aren't Cuckoolanders...
- The Dandy: Noel, and Jeremy Beautiful-Chest.
- Deranged Animation: About as deranged as humanly possible, and then some.
- Domestic Abuse: Secret Peter beats his wife. Played for laughs as she's a non-anthropomorphic peanut.
- The Fashionista: Dolly
- Fish People: Recurring character Daddy Push has a winkle shell for a head. What he's hiding under there is anyone's guess.
- Freudian Excuse: The motorbiking lychee fruit raped an olive because he never got over the death of his father.
- Ironic Echo: Dolly is insulted when Noel asks her whether her latest bizarre activity was a joke or a concept. Later, she asks him the same question when the Jelly Fox scenario turns out to be a bizarre bout of make-believe by Noel.
- Loads and Loads of Roles: Noel Fielding plays about twenty characters per episode.
- Mind Screw
- Monster Clown: Some sketches feature a cackling purple clown known only as The Audience who sits in a cloud making shapes out of mashed potato. He actually appears to be quite friendly, despite being borderline incomprehensible and utterly horrific to look at.
- Monster of the Week
- Peeping Tom: The pineapple who borrows Noel's eyes and uses them to watch people shaving their balls.
- Police Are Useless: Sergeant Boombox and his colleague, Hooper.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Dolly, who supposedly has many jobs (model, DJ, knitwear designer) but we never see her doing any of them.
- Riddle Me This: "If it takes a year to drink a horse, how long does a Spanish priest have to cry for, when rolling up a hill against a north-facing breeze...bearing in mind that it's winter and dark, and the priest is covered in ball bearings and his own shit?"
- Robot Maid: Andy Warhol
- Servile Snarker: Smooth, who is often the voice of reason to Noel, despite being part aardvark.
- Signature Laugh: When Andy Warhol laughs, a string of "individual laughter sheets, strung together like theatre tickets or sausages" comes from his mouth.
- Sketch Comedy
- Skunk Stripe: Doo Rag has one, and sometimes a tiny toy car inexplicably drives along it.
- Split Personality: the Bobbatron's personality veers from pleasant and helpful to psychotically angry at the drop of a hat.
- Surreal Humour
- Talking Animal: Tony Reason, Dondylion, Smooth (although he appears to be more of a human-animal hybrid), and many other animals featured in the show
- Unsettling Gender Reveal: Noel is slightly freaked when he realises his new cleaner Frida Kahlo is just Andy Warhol in a frock. Subverted with Smooth, who knows full well it's Andy and still takes him out on a date.
- Windmill Crusader: Fantasy Man
- Your Head Asplode: Ian Guage, whose musical advances towards a piece of toast are rejected so many times he eventually explodes with the heartbreak.
- You Say Tomato: Dolly's German accent often provokes this response from other characters.