Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy Series 2 blasted its way back onto E4 at the end of July 2014 like a moon-eyed marmoset thrashing about in bath of orange liqueur and we’ve been doting on it ever since. With a whole new setting in Hawaii for Noel, Andy Warhol, Dolly and Smooth, along with a lot of the other old characters you might recognise from the first series, it’s a Paul Panfer-esque return for the surrealist comedy.
The overarching storyline and location for the second series pitches it up well for Noel’s latest fantastical vision. This time around the four main characters have been transported to a coffee shop on the side of a volcano in Hawaii where Noel has set up business, with all of the perils and pitfalls that entails. It creates a lot of surreal potential for the show and Fielding takes advantage of that well every week with a crazy storyline and characters along with writing partner Nick Coan.
It’s a psychedelic infusion of the weird and wonderful inner workings of their inner Salvador Dali reincarnated minds and it results in everything from an attack by the cast members of Magnum P.I. pencil drawn and animated to mental perfection to a terrorising visit from Fantasy Block, a giant Michelin Man style incarnation of Noel’s writers block equivalent that marauds around in wild red stilettos wielding golden hammers to crush Noel’s fantastical ideas.
As the star of the show plays a lot of the characters that feature in it, he’s in the glare of the camera quite a lot, breathing heart and soul into each one of his mad creations, including the prosaic wisdom of record producing stingray Tony Reason (pictured above), the plain nuts of New York Cop Sergeant Raymond Boombox and the little chocolate finger PE coach Roy Circles. Fielding is consistently funny throughout and while he’s probably a little bit more self aware when he’s not playing one of his characters, the fact that it’s been made a part of the script itself accounts for the anomaly well enough.
He’s got a lot of support though from the other three members of the main cast, who add their own layers of comedy icing to the show. Tom Meeton is as genius as ever as Andy Warhol, Dolly Wells is a wall of cool Germanic noise as Noel’s ex Dolly and Michael Fielding is deadpan hilarity in a blue suit as Smooth the anteater. There’s also a fair few cameos to look forward to also, with Richard Ayoade (The Double) joining Noel in the tank as Tony Reason’s musical compadre hammerhead shark Todd Lagoona, and Steve Oram (Sightseers) getting in on the action as the show’s only fan Terry.
As ever with the former Mighty Boosh impresario, music is a big part of the series and just like series 1, Kasabian’s Sergio Pizzorno teams up with Fielding to form the Loose Tapestries to create the music. There’s a class new song in every episode, and we’ve already been treated to the surf style tunes of Paul Panfer (Bazoo!) and the reggae mash-up of Terry’s final goodbye song.
The amazing characters, psychovision story lines and surreal dialogue of Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy Series 2 have made the show infinitely watchable since the first episode aired on the 31st July 2014. The brilliantly fantastical 30 minutes of comedy genius air on Thursday nights at 10pm on E4, but don’t worry too much if you’ve missed out on them up until now, because they’re also available on 4OD, so you should be able to catch up on all the transcendental madness.
Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy Series 2 review: 4.9/5
