Flight of the Conchords: Season 1

Took me long enough, but I finally got around to seeing the first season of Flight of the Conchords, the now-ten-years-old series about two New Zealanders trying to grow a fanbase in America for their band. The band is real, in real life, of course, but I didn't realize that it predated the HBO show by some five or ten years. I'd heard several of their songs before - many of which appear here - but never felt the need to dive on into the comedy series.

Now that I have, let me tell you - it's rough. Not bad, not unfunny, but very dated, stilted, like a show caught between trying to be an absurd comedy and a deadpan mockumentary. Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement are two comic-minded musicians, but they weren't really popping for me in this 2007 show. Part of that is, sure, probably New Zealand comedic sensibilities vs. the American and British ones I'm more accustomed to. But the breakout character here is easily Rhys Darby's Murray, a band manager, who provides the manic energy and general buffoonery that the two leads, as straight men, just don't give off.

Always fun, too, to see familiar faces in early roles. Aziz Ansari makes an appearance in one episode (and does just the worst job, uh, "acting") and looks every bit like the mid-2000s 24-year-old kid he was at the time. Eliza Coupe and June Raphael are here too, in another episode, both younger then than I am today. Will Forte pops in at one point too, reminding me that he spent like ten years as an SNL everyman and bit-player before he really made it as his own guy. And Kristen Schaal's got a recurring role here as the band's only American fan, because of course she would fill that exact role on this exact show.

I'm sure I'll be back for the second season at some point, but I just wasn't blown away by this. Should I have been? I know lots of my college friends liked this - is this one of those cases where there just wasn't as much out there pre-peak TV? I can see this being something original and wholly unique on TV in 2007, but the 2017 landscape is loaded with superior stuff. Is this just an example of one thing being innovative, then plenty of other things honing and perfecting and polishing the rough edges and bugs and kinks? I'm used to seeing that in video games and movies, but in TV not so much!