Flight of the Conchords: Live in London HBO Special

Jemaine Clement Confirms Flight of the Conchords HBO Special ...
TCA: The special will likely be filmed as the Conchords embark on a U.K. tour this spring.

It’s business time: “Flight of the Conchords” may be returning to your TV screen. Jemaine Clement, one half of the comedy music duo, told IndieWire on Friday that he and Bret McKenzie will indeed be filming a special this year for HBO.

Clement was light on the details, but it appears that the duo will be shooting the special for HBO timed to their upcoming U.K. concert tour. Clement and McKenzie, who previously did a series of American festival tour dates in 2016, will hit the U.K. and Ireland this March and April. Clement said the Conchords are now prepping for their return to the stage.

“It should be fun,” said Clement, who was at FX’s portion of the Television Critics Association press tour on Friday as part of the cast of “Legion.” “We’ve done some of it before, some of it will be new. Some of it we’ll be working on in the next few months.” HBO was not available for an immediate response to the news.

As for how the Conchords have evolved, “We’ve grown up,” he said. “We’re not the characters from the TV show, in real life we’re dads now and listen to different kinds of music. The trickiest thing about touring again is getting used to your instrument again. Usually, I take my guitar in the van on the way to work to get used to it.”

Flight of the Conchords Announce New HBO Special
Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie’s hour-long show airs in May

Flight of the Conchords have officially confirmed that they will release a new HBO special in May. According to the cable network, the previously teased hour-long special will be taped during one of their shows in the United Kingdom this spring, during the duo’s “Flight of the Conchords Sing Flight of the Conchords Tour.” The show will feature old favorites as well as new original music. Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie’s original series for HBO premiered in 2007 and came to an end in 2009 after two season. Their last album, I Told You I Was Freaky, was released that same year.

FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS: LIVE AT THE LONDON APOLLO DEBUTS SATURDAY, OCT. 6 ON HBO



FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS: LIVE AT THE LONDON APOLLO will debut SATURDAY, OCT. 6 at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. Taped before a sold-out audience at the Eventim Apollo in London, musical comedians Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement return to HBO to perform their classics and new original songs from their “Flight of the Conchords Sing Flight of the Conchords Tour.”

The comedy special is directed by Hamish Hamilton; executive producers are Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie and Mike Martinovich.

mattdshane: Deep into @flightoftheconchords banter protools land we go with Mickey P at Hot Pie

Reuniting with Flight of the Conchords

Ahead of their new concert special, Flight of the Conchords: Live in London, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement talk songwriting, touring and how they keep their friendship alive. Hint: it involves not murdering each other.

HBO: How would you describe your band?

Bret: There’s two of us in the band.

Jemaine: It’s a two-person band.

Bret: So it’s a lot of duets. Guitars, bass, piano singing, flute, a little bit of flute.

Jemaine: Xylophone. It sounds like there are eight people but it’s all done by us.

Bret: Any two of those instruments at the same time.

HBO: How long does it take to write a new song?

Bret: Takes us quite a long time. We’ve got some newish songs for the special.

Jemaine: It’s not that it takes us a long time, it’s more that we don’t play very often.

Bret: Yeah, we get together once or twice a year, maybe.

Jemaine: We sometimes see each other for pizza or for our kids’ playdates, but that’s on a personal level. As a band, less often.

Bret: The fastest one probably took about 6 years. It’s not that long if we condense the time of actually working on them. Probably about a few days.

HBO: What’s the secret to staying friends?

Jemaine: Don’t stab each other. Once you’ve gone over that line, it’s hard to come back. So if you’re in a band…

Bret: Don’t murder the other people in your band. That’s the longevity trick.

HBO: How is this show different from previous tours?

Bret: This is the first time we’ve filmed one of our concerts. We did a small live special a long time ago, but since then we’ve toured and developed a bigger live show with lighting and more instruments and a small orchestra.

HBO: What inspires your writing?

Bret: We’ve done quite a few songs now so it’s a matter of trying to write something we haven’t written. That’s why they’re getting quite weird. There’s a medieval one, that’s territory we haven’t covered before.

HBO: Do you still get nervous?

Bret: As long as we’ve done some practice it’s quite fun. It’s when we haven’t practiced and we try a song we don’t know it can be quite stressful, because they go quite badly.

Jemaine: But even they can be fun in a small audience.

Bret: The audience likes it more than we do.

Jemaine: That’s always their favorite bit. When we mess up.

Bret: But we’re actually trying to get it right. You’ll see if you watch the special we still make quite a lot of mistakes. We’re going to cut all those out.

mattdshane: A year ago we were in bloody London Town filming and recording @flightoftheconchords Live In London for @hbo and @subpop cant believe it’s been a year already. Photo by the incomparable @rebeccatravis xx!!

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:Wow, that's so awesome that you got see them and give them the colouring book, which looks amazing! I've seen planetareej's artwork on Twitter,  she's super talent, I wish she'd have been able to go to the show, but it was really awesome of you to get her colouring book to them. I really love all the photo's and video, and the fact they did a little interview gives me more hope that they might have a DVD release with some extras on it too, because surely there'd have to be a reason for them to do an interview, well, I'd hope so at least  ;D .

Thanks so much for sharing.

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:I really love them sitting on the toy piano/ just the toy piano in general ;D . I don't think it's the same one as the one on the show though because I watched a YouTube video of it breaking, although I guess they could've fixed it maybe.

Ami wrote:Love the red piano also!! I do remember the day the original Little Red (as we called it) bit the dust, it was a sad day around here... so much so, that a couple of people here got together and bought Bret a new Little Red, as he had been using a white one after ~the incident~ and it just wasn't right to us! They were even lucky enough to get to give it to him in person after one of the shows in '09.

If you're curious....

Photo of Bret receiving the piano --> here

Recap from the person who gave it to him --> here

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:Aw, that's so nice of them to do that for him, and awesome that they got to give it to Bret in person  

I think it's so cute how happy it made him, and I love how  he was like talking to people in the crowd, but at the same time he was obviously just looking for the piano, and then in the end he just ended up asking who had the piano for him , he was just so excited! Bret is just like the most adorable person, and I love the photo's so much! Thank you so much for showing me that  

Jimny_Firestorm2 wrote:Aw, I really wanted them to win, because they deserve it so much (I'm not actually familiar with what did win, but I'm sure it's awesome too), so I'm disappointed that they didn't win (probably more so than they are, well than Jemaine at least, he seems more relieved than anything, which honestly, would probably be my reaction too. Acceptance speeches seem kinda traumatising to me ), and disappointed that Bret didn't get the EGOT, although to be honest I'd never actually heard of that until I read that article about it the other day. At least we got to see lots of awesome photo's though. Thanks for putting all the photo's on here, I can see them better now, especially the kiwi

I'm still so happy that they were both there. I don't really know the Emmys that well, so I actually thought the photo's of Bret with the kiwi  and blue cardboard thing was it, and then next minute there's a photo of Bret and Jemaine and they're all dressed up and looking awesome, which is why I think I got as excited as I did  

Ami wrote:A couple pictures that were missing from this thread.

Finally we get to see more of Jemaine's suit.

(I'd like to know where the hell this video is! )


After party.