Noel Fielding

There's an intriguing twilight zone between hipster music and comedy in which only a few dare to dwell - Look Around You and Jam belong to this rarefied tradition. Here, Noel Fielding, a jollier but no less effective master of the genre, returns with his latest show, a neo-psychedelic riot of mirth that regurgitates decades of memories of broad, Technicolor TV entertainment from The Banana Splits onwards. Tonight's luridly droll cornucopia sees two French chefs take a trip to the moon, a New York cop going undercover in Miami and Noel attempting to create a felt-tip masterpiece.

Mighty Boosh's Noel Fielding: 'I'm a bit like a child'

Noel Fielding talks about his surreal new E4 series Luxury Comedy, the future of The Mighty Boosh, and a baffling box of toast.

I would love to take a holiday in Noel Fielding's imagination - a psychedelic menagerie of custard and spandex, designed by preschoolers on a sugar rush.

His new sketch show sees him cut loose from Mighty Boosh partner Julian Barratt. It's as though someone snapped the string on a helium balloon, leaving him free to bob around in his own little universe.

Part wonky animation, part live action, the first half, which includes a sketch combining Ready Steady Cook and a space launch, is just the wrong side of random to gel.

But in part two, the weirdness pays off when we meet the optimistic Dandelion - a man in a cheap lion suit showing us around his home at the zoo.

Another new character, Roy Circles, comes into his own. Roy is a PE teacher, widow and war hero. He also just happens to be a chocolate finger. Deal with it.

Beyond the Boosh: Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy

The Mighty Boosh is on hiatus, and Never Mind The Buzzcocks is hardly ever on. Are you missing your fix of Noel Fielding's bizarre and wonderful comedy? Don't worry E4 are here to sort you out...

Video: Noel Fielding says music tour would be challenge

Noel Fielding has admitted his new comedy show is difficult to describe due to the many different styles in it.

Fielding worked with Sergio Pizzorno from Kasabian on music for the show and together formed a band called The Loose Tapestries.

The band will release an album following the television series but Fielding admits taking the show on tour would be a challenge.

Fans of Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt's The Mighty Boosh will be familiar with the ideas on offer here: cartoonish characters, dream-like scenarios, quirky phrases. Fielding virgins, however, will be utterly confused by this solo sketch outing. The cult comedian takes surrealism to extreme lengths, with costumes, creatures and characters mostly unexplained, but there are some nice ideas: a recurring segment playing up the pretentiousness of art is a particular highlight. Fielding's an impressive character actor too, with a knack for amusing accents. Essentially, though, Luxury Comedy is made for Boosh fans and Boosh fans alone. If the phrase 'I slice bits of rainbow and put them in pitta breads' tickles you, give it a whirl. If not, probably best to stay away from this psychedelic sketch show.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy review: Poor man's Boosh

This new show may well make all the right noises and pull enough stupid faces to keep the Fielding faithfuls happy, but it will need to contain a little more actual comedy (luxury or otherwise) to hold the attention of a broader audience.

"Television needs a madman," says Noel Fielding, and he delivers lunacy in spades in a new sketch show which is even more madcap than The Mighty Boosh. In the spirit of Kenny Everett but stranger still, the skits revolve around a crayon drawing of Pelé and a talking knife wound.

Nigel Coan brings Noel Fielding's dreams to life

Nigel Coan is the director and animator behind Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy, and is therefore responsible for the unenviable task of bringing the dream world inside Noel Fielding's head onto the small screen.

A (cough) zany sketch show set in a darkly childlike fantasy world of its architect's devising, Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy will doubtless appeal to anyone who's enjoyed the erstwhile Mighty Boosh man's work in the past.

But I must admit that everything he's ever done has left me not so much cold as frozen to the point of death. It's not that I don't "get" his humour - on the contrary, I understand perfectly well what he's trying to achieve - it's just that as an absurdist comedian he's so painfully uninspired and laboured.

Nevertheless, I honestly tried to approach this with an open mind, hoping that left to his own devices Fielding would prove that he's capable of more than pedestrian student whimsy. But as ever I was left bewildered as to how anyone could ever fall for this charmless rubbish.

Undeservedly self-regarding, he patently thinks of himself as a mind-blowing surrealist bursting with astonishing ideas (A sentient chocolate finger! A Noo Yoik cop with a talking wound!). But in reality he's the tiresome equivalent of the unfunny office clown persistently proclaiming how "mad" he is, but without ever once backing up his claims of comic ingenuity. His wide-eyed wacky dream-weaver shtick wouldn't be so embarrassing if he was actually funny, but at the age of 38 he just comes across as an overgrown adolescent attention-seeker with delusions of iconoclasm. Boasting a gaudy melange of deliberately amateurish animation, set design and costumes, his show certainly looks quite nice, and it's agreeable in theory to see something on television with a distinctive aesthetic. It's just unfortunate that Noel Fielding is in charge of it.