The Mighty Boosh
| The Mighty Boosh | |
|---|---|
 The cast of Mighty Boosh 2006 stage show. Rich Fulcher, Julian Barratt, Michael Fielding, Dave Brown and Noel Fielding. | |
| Created by | Noel Fielding Julian Barratt |
| Starring | Noel Fielding Julian Barratt Michael Fielding Rich Fulcher Dave Brown |
| Country of origin |  United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 14 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Camera setup | Single camera |
| Running time | 26 – 28 minutes approx. |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC Three |
| Release | 18 May 2004 – present |
The Mighty Boosh is a British cult comedy about two friends who go on magical adventures. It has appeared initially as series of stage shows, then a BBC radio series and subsequently a BBC Three TV series. The Mighty Boosh was created by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, who play Howard Moon and Vince Noir respectively. Both series have now aired on SBS Australia and Finland's YLE Extra channel. Series one has aired on BBC America, Swedish channel ZTV, Danish channel DR 2 and Portuguese channel RTP2.
The stage show has no strict setting, but the radio series and first television series are based around a zoo called Bob Fossil's Funworld and later The Zooniverse. Though the episodes would invariably begin and end in the zoo, the main characters would tend to leave the zoo for more bizarre realms, such as the arctic tundra and limbo. The second series had an even looser setting, based in a flat in Dalston. Fielding and Barratt are currently working on a third series to be aired in November 2007[1] , which will be set in a shop owned by Naboo, who is played by Noel Fielding's brother. It was recently revealed in NME Magazine that Garage Rock band The Horrors would be appearing in the third seires, along with Razorlight.
Style
The Mighty Boosh is a comic fantasy containing non-sequiturs and pop-culture references. Episodes often feature elaborate musical numbers in different genres, such as electro (or new romantic music), heavy metal, funk, and rap, as well as many shorter songs. Julian Barratt writes the music and sings the psychedelic theme song, and Noel Fielding often sings the series' music. Fielding also designs many of the show's graphics. The TV series has many animated sequences, puppets and special effects. Barratt, in a 2005 interview, says that he approached Fielding with the idea of doing a show like The Goodies[2], as it was a complete "world" rather than simply a sketch show. Fielding and Barratt play many of the supporting characters themselves, usually disguised on TV with elaborate makeup; Rich Fulcher takes on many of the other roles in the TV series and is the only other writer to provide additional material.
The dialogue is mainly scripted but features some improvisation [citation needed]. Series One of the television show opens and often closes with Vince and Howard addressing the audience in front of a curtain; the viewer is thereby led to believe that Howard and Vince wrote the show themselves. The second series leaves this format, instead starting in front of the characters' flat. Unlike the radio series, which is played as though "real", the characters on the TV series all seem aware that they are in a TV show, and Vince especially will often break the fourth wall to address the audience and to comment on the action.
Little attention is paid to continuity; for instance, in the first episode of the radio series, Bob Fossil is forced to give up being boss of the zoo, which is then renamed "Howard Moon's Fun World", yet by the second episode, Jungle, he is once again boss.
Characters
Though there are many recurring characters, the "central cast" consists of five characters:
Howard Moon
Howard Moon (Julian Barratt) is one of the two main characters of The Mighty Boosh. He is insecure, awkward, uptight and pretentious, and claims to be a professional in music, acting, poetry, novel writing, and photography. Although confident in his ability, he is usually shown to be incompetent in these areas. He has a passion for jazz and jazz-funk fusion.
Vince Noir
Vince Noir (Noel Fielding) is the other main character. Unlike Howard, Vince is laid back, well-loved by the rest of the characters and takes pride in his appearance to the point of narcissism. His favourite feature is clearly his hair (a prominent motif throughout the series, as are mirrors), and he is determined to keep up with the latest fashions as defined within each show. Because of his fabulous hair and "glam", androgynous appearance, Vince is repeatedly mistaken for a woman in both television series. He also has many nicknames including the King of Mods and the Shoreditch Vampire.
Bob Fossil
American Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher) is the ill-tempered, eccentric owner of Bob Fossil's Funworld in the radio series and head-zookeeper of The Zooniverse in the television series (with Dixon Bainbridge as the owner). He gives the appearance of being in love with Bainbridge. He often shows affection towards Vince and hatred towards Howard, however on many occasions shows disdain for both of them apart from when he reminds Howard of their times of "violent love". He does not know any of the correct names of the animals and refers to them through obscure names e.g. "bear" (which Fossil regards as the Latin term) a "Russian carpet guy" and a snake a "windy man" or "long mover" The elephant "the grey leg face man" and the pandas are "the Chinese guys who eat sticks." During the memorial service for Howard Moon, Fossil is unable to remember the word "gorilla" and is forced to use a cassette recorder to insert the word into his speech.
Bollo
Bollo (Peter Elliott for television series 1, Dave Brown for television series 2 and the radio series) is a gorilla that leaves the zoo to become a DJ and lives in a flat with Howard, Vince and Naboo. He is Naboo's incompetent familiar; although he predicts trouble, he rarely gets anything else right, and often inadvertently reveals Naboo's magical secrets to Howard and Vince. He dies in the episode named Bollo, but returns in the next episode. In Fountain of Youth, Bollo reveals to Vince that he is actually forty years old, but because he is a DJ, he says that he is twenty-nine. In the radio-series he is referred to as a "hundred-year-old ape".
Naboo
Naboo (Michael Fielding) is a shaman, and is friends with Vince and Howard. In the first series, he works in the Zooniverse's fortune telling kiosk. In the second series, he lives with Howard, Vince and Bollo in a flat in London, though still maintains his shamanic pursuits. Fielding's character is typically deadpan in humour. He regularly rescues Vince and Howard from dire situations. Although often relied on to sort out their problems, Naboo is always stoned and often seen smoking a hookah. He often maintains he will one day go and work in Dixons.
Recurring themes
- Vince and Howard make little effort to hide that The Mighty Boosh is a production with budget constraints (though the budget itself is not negligible). For example, in Bollo, when Howard is supposedly haunting Vince from beyond the grave:
Vince: Are you really a ghost? That is genius... [pokes Howard roughly in the chest]
Howard: What're you doing?
Vince: Sorry, I thought I could put my hand through you.
Howard: No, we spent all the budget on your hair, remember?
Vince: Sorry about that. [leering at camera] It is looking good.
- Much of the artwork created by Noel Fielding for the series features Polo mints in some form or another. This ranges from appearances as graphics (in the opening credits the show's logo is displayed amidst a field of swirling polos) or as subtle addition costumes e.g. the hitcher has a polo mint for one eye. Also, in Bollo, the Ape of Death and his minions appear to be wearing large polos as part of their outfits. Polos can also be seen around the masks of the shaman in Killeroo, and on the performance outfits of the band 'Kraftwerk Orange' in Electro. As well as this, in an episode in the second series, entitled The Call of The Yeti, the characters wear face paint resembling mint polos. The 'Yeti's also have eyes that resemble the popular sweet.
- Both Vince and Howard are shown to have very distinct musical tastes. Howard takes pride in being a multi-instrumentalist with a passion for jazz since his youth. This is in contrast to Vince's taste for more contemporary, yet pre-1990s genres such as electronic or rock-based music, particularly Gary Numan. He is supposed to have converted many of the animals into fans of this artist. Youth subcultures associated with these styles of music are also touched upon, with the two leading characters often trying to cast themselves into certain stereotypes (goth, mod, rocker, et cetera), sometimes to attract members of the opposite sex.
- Mrs. Gideon (played by Victoria Wicks) is the centre of Howard's failing love life. However hard he tries, Vince always seems to get far more attention and recognition than him. This comes to a climax when, after returning Mrs. Gideon's prize python, Tony, she cannot remember Howard's name, despite his having worked there for "10 years". Vince has to hold up a giant placard with "HOWARD" scrawled on it to aid her memory. A character in the radio series, Graham the security guard, had similar trouble remembering who Howard was, and denied him access to the zoo as he did not believe he worked there in the episode Stolen. However, this is apparently because Graham has a poor memory anyway, later being unable to identify himself in a photograph, whereas Mrs. Gideon only has problems remembering Howard.
- The show has had a few particularly memorable moments when inanimate objects in a scene have been replaced by a person dressed as the object, personifying it. A character tells the others to "gather round" so he can inform them of something, and all characters will lean in, including a prop from the scene, now replaced by an actor dressed to resemble the prop. The 'prop' is then told to go away again. The line heard runs similar to "Gather round everyone... Not you, naan bread." and "Gather round everyone... Not you, fire."
- Vince has sometimes helped a supporting character in some way or another and as a show of their thanks they give him a horn to blow in case he is in danger. When he uses the horn, they are preoccupied in an odd manner. For example, "Sandstorm" in the series 2 episode The Fountain of Youth, is seen masturbating to pictures in DIY catalogues when Vince sounds his horn. In the series 1 episode The Hitcher, Bryan Ferry cannot hear the horn over his hoovering.
- Vince is often mistaken for a woman due to his somewhat androgynous appearance. Dixon refers to the pair as "Howard Moon and his ugly girlfriend" and Kodiak Jack refers to Vince as a "young, nubile princess", while the Ape of Death believes Vince is Howard's wife. Within the second series, the characters played by Rich Fulcher often take an interest in Vince, believing him to be a woman. In The Legend of Old Gregg, Fulcher's Fisherman constantly remarks on how pretty he thinks Vince is.
- Howard is often mistaken for Vince's father. In the live stage show, Vince opens a fan-letter that reads "Dear Vince, I think you are so amazing and brilliant, and your hair is so big and tall and nice and I really like you. The only thing is, is why do have to have your dad in the show?" Also, in The Fountain of Youth, a clip shows Vince and Howard as children in school, but Vince appears to be 10 years old and Howard still looks around 40. Another boy asks Vince "Is that your dad?", to which Howard angrily replies "We're the same age!".
- Whenever faced with life-threatening danger, Howard often says "Don't kill me, I've got so much to give!". Faced with similar danger, characters played by Rich Fulcher often say "A little to the left!"
- Vince's friend Leroy is often mentioned, but never actually seen. In Electro, he and Vince have a GlamFolk band, but both are in such thick makeup, Leroy can't be seen. In Mutants, he takes Howard's light blue trousers and Howard walks off to remonstrate, but again he is not seen by the audience.
- Howard often finds himself in trouble, and Vince comes to rescue him. Vince finds his way out of problems with ease, and "falls on his feet", while Howard when faced with danger becomes scared and desperate. This is joked about in Hitcher, when Vince tells Bryan Ferry "thats kinda how the show works".
History
Stage shows
The Mighty Boosh
Fielding and Barratt conceived of The Mighty Boosh whilst working on Stewart Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs. Moby Dick in which they played a giant penis and a whale respectively.
Barratt and Fielding took The Mighty Boosh to the Edinburgh Festival in 1998, recruiting fellow comedian Rich Fulcher, whom the pair had met working on a television series called Unnatural Acts. The show won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer. During their residency at the Hen and Chickens Theatre in North London the following year, they built up a cult following and introduced new characters whilst developing old ones.
Arctic Boosh
In 1999, they returned to the Edinburgh Festival with a new show, Arctic Boosh, which sold out every night and won a nomination for the Perrier Award. It was the first time Dave Brown worked on a Boosh show playing a variety of characters, as well as acting as choreographer and photographer.
Autoboosh
In 2000, while performing their third stage show Autoboosh at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, they won the festival's Barry Humphries Award. Noel's brother Michael and his friend Pete (who worked in Dixons) also went along for the journey, but ended up going on stage with the cast every night. Michael became a permanent fixture.
The Mighty Boosh
In 2006, The Boosh went on tour again. The main story, "The Ruby of Kukundu" - in which Howard and Vince travel to the Arctic and Spain respectively in search of the mystical gem that can restore the life of Naboo, slain by The Hitcher - draws heavily upon the well-known "Tundra" scenario used previously in the TV pilot, both the TV and radio series, and the Edinburgh show Arctic Boosh.
Radio series
The Boosh were signed by the BBC soon after the success of Autoboosh and in October 2001 The Mighty Boosh radio series, produced by Danny Wallace, was first broadcast on BBC London Live, then BBC Radio 4 , and later BBC 7.
Television series
Episode List
Like many other successful British comedies such as Dead Ringers, Goodness Gracious Me and Little Britain, The Mighty Boosh made the transition from radio to television in 2004, when an eight part television series - also called The Mighty Boosh - was commissioned by the BBC. It was directed by Paul King and produced by Baby Cow Productions. The pilot episode was directed by Steve Bendelack, and a large portion of the pilot episode was used in the actual series, in the episode Tundra. The pilot had a laughter track, but the actual series did not.
Series 1 of the television version of The Mighty Boosh expanded on the radio series. It was first broadcast on BBC Three on 18 May 2004 and, from 9 November, also on BBC Two, although in a different order and with the mild swearing censored or edited out. (The censors were not infallible in their task, however. In one case, a word that had been bleeped out in a particular scene was left written in fully legible form on Howard's back seconds later.) A second series began showing on BBC Three on 26 July 2005, though strangely with a smaller budget. A full-length preview of the following week's episode was available online at the BBC's Boosh webpage. Series 1 was released on DVD (Region 2) on August 29, 2005, and Series 2 on February 13, 2006. Series 1 and 2 have also been released on DVD (Region 4) in Australia.
The pair also told Steve Jones that they wanted to call series 3 "series 4", so that future generations could wonder what happened to the third series.[3]
On 26 May 2007, Fielding revealed that filming of the new series would commence in mid July 2007. According to the official website, it will be set in Naboo's Secondhand Shop, where Vince and Howard both work. They have enlisted the help of Richard Ayoade as script editor. The show is due to be aired on BBC Three in Autumn 2007.[4] Gary Numan is scheduled to make a cameo appearance in an episode slated to air in November.
Series 3 is now finished. Filming wrapped on Saturday night (01/09/07) after a long seven weeks, and the series is now being edited and is due to hit UK screens at the end of November[5]
Etymology
The title of the show apparently comes from a comment Noel heard about his brother's (Michael Fielding) hair by a Portuguese friend.[6] "When he was young, he had really curly hair and his little friend when he was five used to say 'You've got a mighty bush!', but his ridiculous Portuguese accent made "bush" sound like "boosh". I thought it was funny, I just overheard them say that once and thought 'Mighty boosh, that's quite cool.' We didn't want to be Barratt and Fielding, that sounds dreadful."[7]
Awards
- The series won Best TV Show at the Shockwaves NME Awards 2007.
- The Mighty Boosh 2006 Tour won a 2007 Chortle award for the best full-length show.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (June 2007) |
- The show credits as executive producers comedians Steve Coogan and Henry Normal, the owners of the producing company Baby Cow Productions. Steve Coogan had also expressed interest to guest star in the episode 'The Call of the Yeti' of the Mighty Boosh as the character of Kodiak Jack as revealed by the audio commentary, however Barratt and Fielding had to decline as the character had been promised to Rich Fulcher.
- Fielding's parents have both had parts in the television show. Noel's mother played a witch on the board of shamans (along with Barratt's father who played another member of the board), while his father played Chris de Burgh.
- Also a member of the board of Shamans, was Noel's six year old cousin, who plays Kirk, described by Saboo as 'an erotic adventurer of the most deranged kind'. This line was an improvisation by Richard Ayoade playing Saboo. In the DVD commentary Noel Fielding proudly states that his cousin responded well to the improvisations, and also that he feels he may have created a 'luvvie' because the child has now joined a drama club.
- In the first episode of Series One ("Killeroo"), the opening part of the Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem is played when Howard appears to be losing the boxing match. When he falls to the ground, the opening of the last chorus from Bach's St. Matthew Passion is played.
- The official fanclub members are known as Modwolves, in reference to characters from the 'Jungle' episode in series one.
- In 'The Priest and the Beast' (series 2), Razorlight and Roger Daltrey guest star.
- In 'Electro' (series 1) and 'Nanageddon' (series 2), Sue Denim and Dee Plume of Robots In Disguise guest star.
- In 'Call of the Yeti' (Season Two) IAMX singer Chris Corner can be seen on the front cover of one of the "Cheekbone" issues.
References
- ^ BBC Radio 2 – Russell Brand: 26 May 07
- ^ Mind the Gag [1] Interview with John Dredge 2005 accessed on April 30, 2007
- ^ YouTube.comBarrat and Fielding interviewed on T4 accessed 30 April, 2007
- ^ BBC Radio 2 – Russell Brand: 26 May 07
- ^ NuWorld [2] news page accessed 27 August, 2007
- ^ Interview on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on 10 November 2006
- ^ YouTube.com Interview on BBC Breakfast News, 2006 accessed on April 30, 2007
External links
- Official The Mighty Boosh Website
- Official Boosh Fansite
- Boosh Fansite
- Mighty Boosh wiki
- The Mighty Boosh at IMDb
- BBC comedy site
- Top Ten Mighty Boosh Clips A well-compiled selection of the best Mighty Boosh moments
- Stand-up routines, interviews and other rarities featuring the stars of The Mighty Boosh