Whenever a British comedy series jumps the pond to a U.S. network, there's always concern over how it'll play to an American audience. Will the TV show find a cult audience, or will it prove too foreign for American palettes dulled by the tired likes of Saturday Night Live and (insert any current sitcom title here)?
When you ask Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding (pictured above, left to right) of The Mighty Boosh how their bizarrely surreal brand of comedy is playing in the States, they'll tell you they might be the last to know.
"We have no idea because we haven't been over here," Fielding told Wired.com in the midst of a U.S. promotional tour for the series' run on Adult Swim.
"It's just us," Barratt said. "There's no filter. It'll be interesting to see how that plays here.... We're considering taking a questionnaire door-to-door throughout the Midwest."
Written by and starring Fielding and Barratt, The Mighty Boosh is a strange comedy adventure about two zookeepers who work at the rundown and otherworldly Zooniverse, surrounded by a cast of oddball characters (including a guy in a gorilla suit).
While some U.K. sketch-comedy shows, most notably Monty Python's Flying Circus and Da Ali G Show, have made waves on U.S. shores, others have failed to connect with American audiences. Boosh has followed a strange path to get its shot as part of Adult Swim's lineup of weirdo programming. Fielding and Barratt based the show on a series of comedy shows for the stage the pair performed in the late 1990s. The success of their live shows spawned a 2001 BBC radio production before The Mighty Boosh came to BBC2 and BBC3 in 2004. Three seasons later, Fielding and Barratt saw their work premiere on Adult Swim this spring.
"We wanted to do a TV show initially, but radio was interesting because we could be a little weirder," said Fielding. "We could do things on radio that we couldn't do on TV because there were no limits. It gave us a chance to develop surreal comedy anywhere -- in any setting. If we wanted to do a sketch on top of a mountain, we wouldn't have to build that set or carry a crew up a hill. We just did what we would."
Fielding and Barratt will head to San Diego's Comic-Con International for DVD signings and panel appearances July 24 and 25. BBC Audiobooks is set to release a 3-CD set, The Mighty Boosh: The Complete Radio Series, featuring all six episodes of their BBC Radio series with a bonus program of never-before-heard material.
Though the comedy duo is known for its rule-breaking format of mixing surrealism and music into the comedy, Fielding and Barratt don't turn up their noses at what could be considered more conventional U.S. network shows.
"When [U.S. television] gets it right, it's really good -- really groundbreaking," Barratt said. "We're fans of The Larry Sanders Show, Larry David [of Curb Your Enthusiasm]. Some shows in England try to mimic that American style of comedy. But we wanted to concentrate on what we do."
After pulling off three successful seasons in the more restrictive world of television, Fielding and Barratt found themselves jonesing for the freedom of live shows
"When we moved to TV, it was a dream come true -- but it was also more difficult to get our comedy to work in that format," Fielding said. "It's harder for us to improv on TV because the structure and budget gives you less room to play. You can't improv if it'll ruin a special-effects shot."
Plus, getting up close and personal with fans, as the crew did when it took its comedy-laced musical set to festivals last year, can be more fun than television's production grind, which they'll probably return to in 2010.
"Performing live stuff is a real buzz," Fielding said.
Image courtesy BBC
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