FOTC premiered in Canada tonight!

Yes, finally... it's on cable here! W00T for all my fellow Canadians living under a rock. I made sure to make sure that everyone I know here in Canadia knew about it... hopefully they watch and get into it.

Here's an article:

Kiwis? Playhouse

New Zealand's Flight of the Conchords finally bring their brand of musical hilarity to basic cable.

Robert Cushman, National Post
Published: Tuesday, October 28, 2008

It hurts to come late to a cult. The natural impulse is to take out one's frustration on the object that's being venerated. But with Flight of the Conchords, there's no chance. This show is wonderful.

For those who don't know, which I'm fondly hoping means most people over 30, Flight of the Conchords come from New Zealand and they're a band, and I can't help it if that sentence looks ungrammatical. Seems like all the good plural band names were taken. Anyway, Flight aren't that plural, as there are only two of them. One, the taller and broader and clumsier of the two, is called Jemaine, and he's played by Jemaine Clement. The more compact of the two, marginally more competent especially at dealing with girlfriends, is Bret, played by Bret McKenzie. (The way he pronounces it, it sounds like Brit, and that's not just me, because some non-New Zealanders on the show hear it that way, too, and get confused.) So, yes, the actors have the same names as their characters. They explain this at some length in the show's trailer, which is in heavy rotation on the Comedy Network, and is unique among that station's ads in that it actually makes you want to watch the show it's plugging. (Most make you run screaming from the very idea.) Jemaine and Bret hawk their wares with exactly the kind of casual, downbeat solemnity that they project in the show itself. Jemaine grins. Bret smirks. They're self-deprecating even while self-promoting.

Clement and McKenzie actually are a band in, you know, real life;
they write song parodies, of which they have built up a rich bank. The TV show is structured around these numbers. It shows us Jemaine and Bret trying to make it in New York and failing, at least to date, abjectly. In one episode (next week's, actually) Bret and Jemaine are starving, reduced Jemaine is anyway to eating a sandwich that Bret has found on the street. We cut from this squalid domestic scene to a rap number titled Inner City Pressure that finds Jemaine, generally the more volubly aggrieved of the two, in his local convenience store, rhyming about "
Counting coins on the counter of the 7-Eleven / From a quarter past six to a quarter to seven."
Oh, and the manager's name is Bevan. Lovely sense of specifics these guys have. The number, like all the numbers on the show, is shot like a low budget video, with the two participants doing the work of a chorus by being caught lurking in improbable corners. That's also how they live their lives. When Bret acquires a girlfriend named Coco (Sutton Foster no less, Broadway star of Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Drowsy Chaperone), Jemaine insists on tagging along on all their dates.

That's in Episode Four, which I strongly recommend, and which is called "
Yoko"
, Jemaine having seized on the rhyming significance of Coco's name to accuse her of breaking up the band. More constructively, he dissuades his friend from writing a two-hour ballad about climbing the highest mountain and persuades him to substitute more prosaic proofs of devotion.

In Episode Three, we meet Murray (Rhys Darby), the Conchords' manager and compatriot who operates semi-clandestinely out of an office in the New Zealand consulate and seems mildly surprised that his clients expect him to get them gigs. He also likes making lists and calling "
band meetings"
, often in his car or in the park;
he seems suspiciously happy that Jemaine "
isn't going to get a girlfriend any time soon."
To make up for this, the boys have a rabid and unwanted groupie named Mel (Kristen Schaal, last seen by me as a gloriously unqualified would-be host on The Daily Show) who throws herself at them whenever they meet on the street while her husband looks philosophically on.

I don't know if Bret and Jemaine are students of classic British comedy;
they have obvious hints of Ricky Gervais, but they also remind me of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their down-and-out mode: the would-be smooth exchanging philosophical gems with the incurably chirpy. As they're the only New Zealand comedians I've ever seen, I can't say whether they're typical, but they do give the impression of being a portent: a sign that their country has funnier things to offer the world than The Piano and Lord of the Rings. If their efforts to take a bite out of the Big Apple leave them choking, that's part of the joke. (And look how well the hick shtick has turned out for Canadians.) There's a new flavour about this show: dry slapstick. It shows in particular in the way that Jemaine in particular changes accents. He can sound unaccountably English, even when rapping: "
Yes, my lyrics are sexist / but you ladies should know I'm trying to correct it."
I hope the bad rhyme is intentional. Anyway, it's hilarious. If this is a sitcom, and I can't think of any other way to classify it, it's the best in a very long time. I laughed very loud and very often.

- Flight of the Conchords premieres tonight at 10:30 p. m. on The Comedy Network.

source:

"
Taller, broader and clumsier"
. . . . . sounds like my dream guy. .*swoon* XD

Especially the "
broader"
part... guhhhhhhh. *swoons with Chloe*

If I hadn't already forced this show on 99% of my friends, they would all be hearing about this development. I can't believe how late Canada is, this could explain why we are so few around here!

zombie wrote:I can't believe how late Canada is, this could explain why we are so few around here!

Indeed! I hope to see an onslaught of new Canadian flighties to add to the bunch soon.

I am imagining Ami and Jess with sandwich boards and signs advertising the board to Canadians, so that should bring them coming in droves

Hahaha well we haven't gone that far..... yet.

I pretty much have made everyone I know watch them.. I'm now working on the people I don't know. " title="" border="0"/>