Am I nothing?

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy review

I'm a huge Mighty Boosh fan, so I was looking forward to see Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy at last. I watched the second episode, and I noticed after 15 minutes: I haven't even smiled at a thing they've said.

After seeing all of the Mighty Boosh series at least five times, I have realised that Noel Fielding's fancy pants and amazing hair are not enough on their own. The Boosh was successful because two absolutely different characters were brilliantly supplementing each other. Julian Barratt was the biggest counterpoint of Fielding's (sometimes) absolutely pointless psychedelic nonsense. The role of the adorable naive moron and the style freak, slightly feminine (and also crazy) mod were the best ones you could pair. No wonder it was a hit, they had been on about it for years before it went to telly, so they had enough time to find out what works and what doesn't.

Although the new Fielding show was slightly delayed, I can't say it's perfectly rehearsed or had any concept whatsoever other than Noel's scribblings and the old Boosh team - without Barratt apparently.

My initial joy of seeing something hilarious was quickly ruined after I saw the intro. In that very moment when I saw Fielding's face in glittery paint and his "creeping around" moves I realised that Noel can't get out of the image he generated for himself - playing the front man in high-heel boots.

I felt that Noel was trying to carry on with the psychedelic part of the Boosh with reinterpreting some characters such as The Moon and turning it to a manta, but sadly the wit and sparkle was left out together with Julian Barratt.

Making videos of a dozen different characters and putting them after the other without jokes won't be funny - not even in a million years. Watching Noel painting maybe melt the hearts of the under aged fan girls - and I have to admit that he is talented and the whole production is full of amazing paintings and animations - but that's not enough for me. Poor Dave Brown made an effort to give a bit more to the scene with dancing with a big red hairy chest but it was just simply stupid and dull.

Then I was shocked when I saw Fielding dressed up as a muscular reptile sort of creature in pink pants and green snake-like face, because after another 3 or 4 minutes there was still no joke, apart from Rich Fulcher's "hilarious" quirk: "I've got a tongue just like you" then blowing a party whistle...

Then came the road to the Jelly Fox sequence, where you can see close ups of Noel's face even in four different colours and his mesmerising huge blue eyes. The red one's mumbling something about Apocalypto, while the green Spoon Snake is keep asking "Am I nothing?" which seemed to me as time fillers rather than witty monologues.

All along you feel like you're left on the deserted island of Noel's mind on LSD with these strange vivid and colourful images which don't seem to connect to one another and that's frustrating.

Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy but maybe it is a piece of dull crap overrated by critics who know Fielding by reputation, but only seen the teaser clips on YouTube. The show is definitely more than nothing but they should make quite an effort to turn it into something.