Greatest Underrated Comedy of the Previous Decade #1

Sometimes you feel a comedy series deserved more recognition, and in the last decade we had quite a few series that never quite reached their full potential, or, through no fault of their own went under the radar.

Noel Fielding interview: Luxury Comedy

An interview with Noel Fielding about his TV show.

In the last in the second series of Noel Fielding's postmodern sitcom Luxury Comedy, he's tasked with boosting the show's ratings before the end of the episode. If he fails, the programme will be axed and all the characters therein will be promptly incinerated. There, told you it was postmodern. Terry and June was never this self-aware. Once he's off screen again, Fielding disciples will be bereft. Those who find his wilfully surreal mugging eye-rollingly tedious will get over it pretty quickly.

Luxury Comedy gets funnier the more it apologises

The Mighty Boosh star's first solo series was a flop, but self-awareness (and a hammer) are saving series two from sinking under the weight of its surrealism.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, TV review

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy 2: Tales from Painted Hawaii is fun for all the family with a multicoloured set that Nickelodeon would deem too garish. Visually, it's a meticulously fashioned delight - as you'd expect from the man with that haircut. Credit for this should also go to Fielding's long-time collaborator, Nigel Coan. As a sketch-show animator, he's proving himself a worthy successor to the Python's Terry Gilliam.

It has been two years since Noel's last foray into stream-of-consciousness surrealism and felt-tip drawings, and little has changed. Andy Warhol (Tom Meeten) is still on the scene, as is Noel's real-life bro Michael, who reprises his half-man, half-anteater role. This time around, they have relocated to a coffee shop perched on a Hawaiian volcano, where the cast of Magnum PI attempt to sacrifice Noel. Sadly it's more economy than luxury, with the weirdness cranked up to 11 in the hope that no one will twig.

Radio Times review

Right, so, roughly four of you are going to enjoy this, but those four will love it. The first series of Luxury Comedy was shown back in 2012 as a wonderful oddity: The Mighty Boosh star combining non-sequiturs and pop-art into a technicolour migraine that was inventive if not hysterically funny.

The second series moves to a coffee shop, which Noel admits would be "the location for a boring sitcom" if it weren't on the edge of a volcano and wasn't staffed by Andy Warhol and Nico of Velvet Underground fame. Self-consciously weird and self-consciously cool, Luxury Comedy is not so much niche as exclusive. Unfortunately, for many people, it will be as fun as standing in line for Studio 54.

Luxury Comedy: making series 2 more accessable

The extreme reactions seem to be something that Fielding took on board when developing series two with co-writer and director Nigel Coan.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy: 'best watched driunk'

I like Noel Fielding's comedy so much that sometimes I am embarrassed by its periodic bathos - attempts at jokes that trip and fall flat. But the hit rate is pretty high. What is there to like? Principally the puppet-like masked disguises which produce a surreal other-worldliness against which the jokes are set. I also like the voices and daft songs.

Luxury Comedy 2 preview

I remember watching the first series, and how I felt after, but this time around I enjoyed it a lot more.