Flight of the Conchords (TV Series) (2007– 2009)

Creators: James Bobin, Jermaine Clement, Bret McKenzie
Cast:       Jermaine Clement, Bret McKenzie, Rhys Darby, Kristen Schaal, Arj Barker

Bret and Jermaine are the Flight of the Conchords, a folk-rock band from New Zealand living in New-York in search of stardom. To quote themselves, Jermaine is the moppy one while Bret the naive one. They have got a New Zealand consulate guy as the manager of the band and all of them are clueless in a good way.

Peep Show, one of my favorite comedy shows of all time, also had two 'losers' living in an apartment even though their personalities differ very much. Their manager, Murray Hewitt, is anti Ari Gold in terms of how he operates but is similar in the sense that he is the star of the show. The show works as a musical comedy with each episode containing two songs with interesting lyrics. My favorite songs in it would be 'Binary Solo' and 'Too many dicks on the dance floor'. Many of the jokes involve the relative obscurity of their country, New Zealand, the intensity of which should be higher if you are in a place like USA whose population is generally considered as geographically challenged. I guess we from cricket following countries cannot grasp how obscure New Zealand would be for Americas who also don't follow rugby along with cricket. Following sports can really help your geography knowledge and I can name many cities in Europe just because I follow Liverpool. 

Coming back to the show, it has got a very cheap look which goes well with the overall theme. Some of the jokes involve taking things too literally and other sort of word plays. Watching with subtitles on is recommended, especially for the song lyrics. It should be good on re watch as well. The show ran on HBO lasting two series with twenty two episodes in total. They had also done a BBC radio show prior to this. They won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album and was surprised to see Bret McKenzie listed as an academy award winner in the wiki page. It was for a song in the Muppets movie.

Overall it is a great watch with a very different format. Jermaine Clement was the director of 'What We Do In The Shadows', which was one of the funniest film from last year. Taika Waititi, his co-director for that, was also involved with some of the episodes of the Conchords. Clement had speculated on the possibility of a film based on FoC in 2011 but HBO clarified later that it is not in their plans. I don't think it will work well as a film because the main attraction of the story, as referenced in the last episode, is that they start at the bottom-'works hard' while remaining at the bottom- and end the show still at the bottom. If you have any doubts, Murray will explain it for you with a graph having time on X-axis and their social status on Y.

Rating: 4/5 

                                                                          

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

Directors: Jermaine Clement, Taika Waititi
Writers:    Jermaine Clement, Taika Waititi
Cast:        Jermaine Clement, Taika Waititi, Jonathan Brugh

Follow the lives of Viago (Taika Waititi), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), and Vladislav (Jermaine Clement)- three flatmates who are just trying to get by and overcome life's obstacles-like being immortal vampires who must feast on human blood in Wellington, New Zealand. 

It can be called a horror comedy mockumentary film with minimal involvement from the ones wielding camera. At the start of the film, the centuries old vampires are little out of touch with the 21st century. Since they cannot see themselves in the mirror they have to rely on drawings while dressing up. When they inadvertently converts one of their victims into a vampire, the recent vampire with the help of his computer expert human friend introduces them into the cutting edge technologies like camera, phones, Skype and internet (to do their dark bidding on eBay) . The initial good feeling is replaced by disillusionment as the  amateurishness of the recent vampire leads them into some trouble. The plot is  wafer thin but the humor works well for it to make it a great watch. It also helps that over the course of the film they explain various aspects in which vampires differ from us humans and this would serve us very well when we watch other vampire films. I am not a huge fan of the genre but we are at a stage where the big shitty Twilight franchise is over and we are getting some very good vampire films from very good directors. 'Only Lovers Left Alive' from Jim Jarmusch is among my favorites of this year and 'Let the right one in' is another good one from yesteryear's. All three represent three takes on the genre and all of them are great.

Jermaine Clement of the director duo was involved with the TV series 'Flight of the Conchords' which I have not seen. I think this is the first film I have seen set in New Zealand (LoTR does not count). Andrew Dominik is from New Zealand and is a favorite director of mine but i don't think any of the films that I have seen from him is set there (Chopper is the only real candidate but that was set in Australia). 

Rating: 4/5