Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy returns for a new series on Thursday the 31st of July at 10.00pm and we were lucky enough to catch up with the eponymous troubadour in the upper extremities of the Channel 4 surrealism thought cube to find out more about the second series of the show. This time around it’s set in a coffee shop. In Hawaii. On the edge of a volcano. So far, so Noel Fielding.
It’s been 2½ years since the first series, why such a wait for the second series to arrive?
“This stuff takes ages to write,” Noel said, “It took a year to write with Nigel (Coan, who also directs the show), we sit together in a cold room in Camden thinking ‘Is this funny?’ And then it takes about 6 months to film and then another 6 months on post-production with the amount of animation. There’s just so much detail in each show.”
In the first episode there’s a running joke about how you can’t believe that you’ve been given another series, is there any truth in that?
“Channel 4 loved it & gave us a second series quite quickly,” said Noel recalling how the first series really polarised people. “Some people loved it and some got furious. Someone on Twitter called it ‘The second 9/11’. Another person on Twitter said ‘I’ve not seen Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be shit.’ I thought, I hope you never do jury service!
“But people who liked it loved it and when I did some shows in Australia people came dressed as characters from it! There was a man dressed as a piece of French Toast in the Sydney Opera House!”
From the first few episodes we’ve seen, series 2 seems to have more of a sitcom-my feel to it, was that intentional in any way?
“There’s so many amazing elements to the show, especially with the animation and the performances, but there was something not quite coming through so this time we’ve made a bit more story to take the lead and to give the show more direction” Noel explained.
But why a coffee shop in Hawaii?
“I’ve never had a job and I’ve never been to Hawaii. It’s quite an easy place to understand and you don’t have to go into too much detail about the job. It’s just somewhere simple and low status comedy-wise. The 1st series didn’t know where it was, so this was done to make it a bit more charming and I wanted to focus more on Dolly (Dolly Wells), Andy Warhol (Tom Meetan) & Smooth (Michael Fielding) & make them ‘the family’ of the show.”
Find out more about Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy Series 2.
