{"id":383848,"date":"2026-04-17T07:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/383848\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T07:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:27:08","slug":"review-flight-of-the-conchords-comeback-show-was-a-mess-in-the-best-possible-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/383848\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Flight of The Conchords\u2019 comeback show was a mess in the best possible way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie promised they\u2019d put more practice in for the rest of their tour. Let\u2019s hope they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Few things are more Wellington-coded than the folk-comedy singing locals selling out (in eight minutes) a four-night run at a church-turned-music-venue in the city. Eight years since their last performance<\/a>, Flight of the Conchords made their comeback at the capital\u2019s Meow Nui on Thursday night in the messiest fashion possible. There were missed cues, forgotten lyrics, restarts on songs, off-tempo drum machines, an entire song skipped because it felt too hard \u2013 making for a shambles of a show which ultimately struck all the right chords.<\/p>\n

An opening night full of snags where almost no song is performed perfectly would typically described anywhere between a bit bad to completely oh-my-God-these-people-should-quit-forever awful. But even when fumbling through openers \u2018Father and Son\u2019, \u2018A Kiss is Not a Contract\u2019 and \u2018Mutha\u2019uckas\u2019, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie\u2019s ability to breeze through the awkwardness and brush over the bumps with banter only amplified the comedic charm.<\/p>\n

Within the first 15 minutes, Clement had to assure the crowd that \u201cthis is hopefully the worst we\u2019ll ever be\u201d. Mckenzie quipped that \u201cthis band has a lot of potential,\u201d and both singers pledged to put in a bit of work before they return for the rest of their tour, which will eventually take them to the US. Let\u2019s hope they don\u2019t; the show works perfectly as just two dudes doing some band shit.<\/p>\n

Now, I say all of this while openly admitting this was my first real exposure to Flight of the Conchords. I\u2019ve never seen their hit HBO show, nor have I ever really listened to their music at all, except for \u2018Feel Inside (And Stuff Like That)\u2019 because I was 12 when that song came out so it was absolutely my shit. But you didn\u2019t need to be a die-hard fan to recognise the missteps, because the duo were adept at pointing it all out, providing for a solid hour-and-a-half of that good old sardonic and self-deprecating New Zealand humour that they wear so well.<\/p>\n

\"AApologies for the crappy photo quality \u2013 there was a strict \u2018no filming\u2019 policy and Mckenzie promised anyone caught breaking it would be tasered.<\/p>\n

Maybe it works because I\u2019m hearing all of the jokes for the first time, too. Or maybe it was the energy from the hometown venue, where punters laughed at every gag, sang along to the hits and were generally the politest crowd I\u2019ve ever experienced in this piece of shit dumbass mean spirited country<\/a>. Some were already here two weeks ago, to watch McKenzie perform a solo show. The band couldn\u2019t have asked for a better comeback crowd; hundreds of clearly die-hard fans who didn\u2019t need a production of Sabrina Carpenter proportions \u2013 it\u2019s enough to watch the local jokesters take too long to tune a guitar and drop the same jokes they\u2019ve been dropping for about two decades.<\/p>\n

As well as the classics (\u2018Business Time\u2019, \u2018The Most Beautiful Girl (In The Room)\u2019) the band reached back into the archives to deliver deep cuts like \u2018Frodo, Don\u2019t Wear The Ring\u2019, \u2018Jenny\u2019, \u2018Think About It\u2019 and \u2018Bus Driver\u2019. One of the things you must worry about as musical comedians rehashing jokes from the 2000s is whether or not they\u2019ll withstand the test of time. By McKenzie\u2019s own admission, \u201csome of the stuff\u2019s dated quite badly, but that\u2019s cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Robots\u2019 had a few lines updated to reference artificial intelligence, which would have seemed like proper sci-fi shit when the song was originally released way back in the distant past of 2008. They kept \u201cwere you ever called a homo in school because you took drama?\u201d in \u2018Hurt Feelings\u2019, mostly because McKenzie wasn\u2019t quick enough on his feet to think of something else. And when the duo performed \u2018Carol Brown\u2019 and Clement got around to singing that \u201cBruce turned out to be a man,\u201d he immediately corrected himself: \u201cWe\u2019ll change that.\u201d And for \u201cBritney\u201d who \u201chit me\u201d, as well. \u201cIf you wait long enough, your jokes will become edgy, too,\u201d McKenzie assured the crowd.<\/p>\n

\"\"Survived another tasering to take this photo.<\/p>\n

When the set ended, they returned only a few minutes later for an encore which included \u2018Ladies of The World\u2019 and \u2018Hiphopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros\u2019. Across the hour and 40 minutes that Flight of the Conchords were on stage, they served up a pretty heft chunk of their discography, striking a good balance between the old fan favourites and the big hits like \u2018Hurt Feelings\u2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that this run of four hometown shows is meant to work as a warm-up for when the duo takes the stage at Los Angeles\u2019 The Greek Theatre for the Netflix Is a Joke Festival in May. It\u2019s hard to say whether the shambles experienced in Wellington would go down as well with an American audience at the world\u2019s biggest comedy festival. But bugger them \u2013 if it takes Flight of the Conchords until their fourth and final New Zealand show to finally get everything right before they head overseas, they will still have saved the best of themselves for us.<\/p>\n

Clement and Mckenzie will return to the sold-out Meow Nui stage again tonight (Friday). Expect to see Wellingtonians, from the Gen Xers to the Gen Zers, queuing along Ghuznee Street and spilling over to Taranaki St. Envy them: they\u2019re about to experience the best musical comedy set of their lives, from New Zealand\u2019s fourth most popular folk-comedy duo and the capital\u2019s most beloved musical dorks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie promised they\u2019d put more practice in for the rest of their tour. Let\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[137143,156,137146,199242,199243,111,139,69,1066,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-383848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bret-mckenzie","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-flight-of-the-conchords","11":"tag-jemaine-clement","12":"tag-meow-nui","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-pop-culture","17":"tag-wellington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}