Tom Meeten

Timewasters is no waste of time

Daniel Lawrence Taylor's sitcom about a time-travelling jazz band is well worth your time.

Yonderland review: season 3 episode 5

Things get intense on this week's Yonderland, as Debbie puts herself in a sticky situation to rescue... a dude who we're pretty sure until very recently was definitely a baddie. This can only turn out well!

Preview: Prevenge

Featuring a cast primarily made up of TVO regulars, and with Alice Lowe writing and directing as well as leading that incredible cast, we were naturally very keen to see it. Our editor, Paul Holmes, shares his thoughts below...

Tom Meeten & Mike Fielding talk tours

Here is what Tom Meeten and Mike Fielding told us about the live show [An Evening With Noel Fielding] and how the three of them work together. A glimpse through the stage curtains from a different angle, as it were.

Review: An Evening with Noel Fielding

It's all very light stuff; even a part of the show he describes as "bleak" culminates with Noel remembering coming home and finding his wife in bed with a triangle, later played by Luxury Comedy actor Tom Meeten.

It has been two years since Noel's last foray into stream-of-consciousness surrealism and felt-tip drawings, and little has changed. Andy Warhol (Tom Meeten) is still on the scene, as is Noel's real-life bro Michael, who reprises his half-man, half-anteater role. This time around, they have relocated to a coffee shop perched on a Hawaiian volcano, where the cast of Magnum PI attempt to sacrifice Noel. Sadly it's more economy than luxury, with the weirdness cranked up to 11 in the hope that no one will twig.

Noel Fielding's new sketch show has been publicised widely - there's not a bus shelter in my hometown of Stockton without a poster of Fielding in some bizarre costume.

When you watch the show it gets even weirder. Fielding is living in a treehouse in a jungle, with an aardvark butler (played by Noel's brother Michael) and with Andy Warhol (Tom Meeten) as his cleaner. Then there are other characters played by Fielding, including a New York cop with a talking knife wound, a lion in a zoo going slowly insane, and a games teacher with shell shock - who is also a chocolate finger.

Normally I like it when comedians push at the extremes, whether it's in terms of language, situation or realism/surrealism. However, Luxury Comedy appears to be one of those rather rare cases of going too far instead of not far enough. His earlier work, The Mighty Boosh, was itself bizarre and wonderfully funny, but also had the added advantage of Julian Barratt keeping things in control and from going too off the wall. This show is just bizarre, though - all surrealism and seemingly without comedy.

For me the best bit was seemingly the sanest, which was Fielding's drawing of Pele holding a china cup and kicking what was either a ball or the saucer for the cup. I think it worked because at least you can connect the show with something that exists in the real world. The same is true with the 'Warhol' character.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy is too far disconnected from anything recognisable to make it funny. A good piece of art perhaps - totally maverick - but that's about it.

Such is the hackneyed feel of this witless sketch show - skits include a parody of This Morning presented by Dodi Fayed and Princess Diana - you may feel as if you've been transported back at least a decade. Amazingly, it takes not just writer-performers Tom Meeten and Barunka O'Shaughnessy to produce this twaddle but at least six others and a performance consultant. Makes The Kevin Bishop Show] look like Morecambe & Wise.