adamsfriendjoe

‘Chapter 3, his difficult third series, it’s gonna get criticised whatever, isn’t it? After all the good he did in one and two…He should just leave it there.’

 Ricky Gervais said this in regards to the Bible during his first stand up tour, ‘Animals’, obviously joking about the reception a third series of The Office would receive. However, I believe that Gervais may have been onto something, especially with regards to The Mighty Boosh.

Now, this isn’t going to be an article that thoroughly slates The Mighty Boosh, saying they have betrayed everything which they stood for, everything that made them great. I’m not going to idolize the past making any future episodes impossible to match up. The Mighty Boosh, just like any comedy, band etc, will undoubtedly change, becoming different to that which you originally fell in love with.

I also don’t want you to think I am just being overly negative in what I say about The Mighty Boosh. I always try and see the best in programmes, and am often the last one to actually admit that they are or have become poor. I insisted on seeing Pirates and the Caribbean 3 three times before admitting it was actually not that good, just because I didn’t like admitting it had slipped from the quality of the first installment.

I feel this flaw then makes my negative criticisms more valid as they are against my nature.

However, the third series of The Mighty Boosh just was not good. Simple. Fact. 

I, being a stereotypical student, watched Boosh countlessly on DVD and quoted it without pause in everyday conversation; with friends I could have entire conversations constructed of Booshisms. So, like every other student, when I heard Boosh was returning with a third series I was giddy with joy. I wouldn’t listen to the suggestions it might be bad.

‘Hush!’ I would say to the detractor, ‘You do not question whether Father Christmas will have a bad year. Then thou shall not question the Boosh!’

They would then nod, admiring my wisdom.

(this conversation is paraphrased)

However, when  I watched the first few episodes, as hard as I tried to love them and be the quintessential student, I couldn’t help feeling a few nagging doubts. Rehashed characters re-emerged, old jokes were repeated and repeated. It wasn’t really that different to other episodes, but it just didn’t seem to have as much or do it…properly.

There are undoubtedly good points in the series. Vince and Howard still have a brilliant relationship, constantly making hilarious bizarre references to each other, and Episode 3 about crimping is very funny. At this point, with news that there would be a new character next week, I really thought the series would take off, making new classics like ‘Nanageddon’, ‘The Legend of Old Gregg’, and ‘Mutants’. I was wrong.

A lot of what made Boosh so great disappears in this series. Before, every episode was incredibly plot driven: they usually had to go somewhere, do something, usually in bizarre landscapes. For example, in ‘Tundra’ they go to the Arctic Tundra to get the Egg of Mantumbi, in ‘Jungle’ they need to find Tommy to stop Dixon Bainbridge buying the zoo, in ‘Bollo’ Howard goes to monkey hell and Vince tries to save him, in ‘Nanageddon’ they release the worst ever demon, ‘Nanatoo’, and have to stop it, in ‘The Call of The Yeti’ they go on holiday and try to find the legendary Yeti creature. I have included all these examples (and I could go on) to really emphasise the importance of adventure and storyline within the Boosh.

However, apart from Episode 2, which is one of the best in the series, plots do not really exist; loose story-lines appear to be superfluous, an irrelevant necessity in order that they can make random remarks and rehash old jokes and one-liners. One episode is literally based around them having a party and not once in the entire series do they leave their fashionista neighbourhood of Shoreditch.

Songs, which used to be in nearly every episode, are now virtually non-existent and, apart from ‘Future Sailors’, appear to be unoriginal and unintelligent. The most embarrassing moment I found was when Bollo and Naboo sang a drugs ballad (there is another massive drug joke when they cook the hash cakes in the style of a cooking show. I know the audience tends to be students, but come on guys! This just seemed like aging men trying a bit too hard!)

Characters are equally low in abundance. In the previous series, there are usually one or two characters in every single episode: ‘The Legend of Old Gregg’ features Old Gregg (of course) and all the sailors in the pub, ‘Bollo’ has the monkeys who rule monkey hell and Death, ‘Jungle’ has Tommy Nooka, a psychadelic guitar playing guru and the mod-wolves. In the entire third series there are about four new characters, two in the final episode, a Crack Fox and Noel Fielding as a rudeboy. Instead, they constantly insist on bringing back old characters: The Hitcher, the Spirit of Jazz (although they change his name) and the Shaman posse. 

It seems as if they couldn’t come up with anything new and so they regurgitated the same stuff, which consequently becomes unfunny and annoying. Catchphrases start to appear like Tony Harrison’s, ‘This is an outrage!’ and the characters turn into caricatures. The relationship of Vince being cool and Howard being a bit geeky is completely polarised in this series with Vince being paraded as some sort of Camden King while we are constantly reminded that Howard likes jazz and that’s not ‘cool’. Furthermore, it is overly self-referential, constantly name-dropping – The Horrors, living in Shoreditch etc – which firmly routes it within the real, something the Boosh always appeared to react against.

The problem is as if Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett have become too aware of the type of people that find it funny and why, and so they end up pushing all these elements too far: they crimp every five seconds, Vince only ever wears the most extreme lycra outfits, lines that were once funny are reiterated and characters are reused. As a result, Boosh seems to lose any sense of balance and goes from something that is cutting edge and cool to something that is trying too hard to be cutting edge and cool. In the third series Boosh seems to turn into a poor imitation of itself.