I know it was already discussed on old OTF here and here, but I'm selfishly starting a new thread because I've only just caught up with it.

I'd already seen the Pet Shop Boys pastiche "Inner City Pressure" on Youtube (and loved it), and listened to their album (and enjoyed that too), and downloaded some of the radio series (but couldn't get into it because it was in tiny bits and I couldn't figure out the correct order)... but it's on BT Vision's On Demand thing now and I've started watching the television series from scratch.

And it's nothing short of total GENIUS. The interaction between the two guys is just beautiful. So subtle, so understated, so deadpan, so piss-yourself-funny. (And so true, too. Rings so many bells, regarding both male-to-male friendship and the experience of struggling bands.)

Not all the songs work. The hip hop thing, Rhymenoceros and Hiphopapotamus, was lame. Whenever white guys try to do rap it's doomed. I've got various theories as to why this is, and I don't think it's completely to do with the fact that they're doing a parody of rap as it was in 1987 as opposed to 2008, nor is it completely to do with the fact that the entire gag usually relies on the done-to-death pathos and incongruity of an uncool white guy acting like a cool black guy. I think it's to do with the fact that ripping the piss out of the surface of rap - the bleedingly obvious signifiers of it - will always backfire, because the real thing is always so much richer and more vibrant. To have any chance of being funny, you have to absolutely throw yourself into it, immerse yourself, and work it from the inside.

Anyway, yeah, so that was shit. But the rest of their stuff is so un-shit it's amazing. Favourite bits so far (I've watched four episodes) include the vaguely Prince-y song at the houseparty about the most beautiful girl in the room ("depending on the street" and all that, and "you're so beautiful you could be a waitress"/"air hostess in the Sixties"/"part time model" etc), and the spoken bit at the start of "Boom":

"Oh my god, she's hot... she's so flipping hot... she's like a curry... I want to tell her how hot she is but she'll think I'm sexist... she's so hot she's making me sexist."

That last bit, "She's so hot she's making me sexist" is one of the most brilliantly true sentences in any comedy ever. Wonderful.

Also, it has to be said that on a purely musical level they're excellent. The "Brown paper, white paper" song has been stuck in my head for the last 12 hours.

1. Think About It
2. Bowie
3. The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room
4. Hip-Hopopotamus v Rhymenoceros
5. A Kiss Is Not A Contract

This may differ greatly from my previous top five, I can't be bothered to check.

Hip-Hopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros is great. It's not a parody of hip-hop, it's the characters' approximation of it. White folks attempting hip-hop frontin' isn't a very new gag for sure, but it's funny and would be destroyed instantly if the music were any more authentic or complex. Their music is always perfectly balanced between virtuosity (so you actually enjoy listening to it) and simplicity (so you can just about believe that the characters came up with it). A sophisticated hip-hop production would be a disaster.

Not sure why the fact that it's 80s hip-hop and not 00s is a problem either. Surely that makes much more sense.

"The humans are dead"

I can't get that song out of my head.

I really like how they take the piss out of cliched song strucures ("this is where we break it down, yeah, break it down now" etc followed by "this is where we build it up" and so on).

You should check out their podcasts. I downloaded a bunch of them from iTunes, and while some of them are just HBO trailers and short exerts from the show, their stalker fan Mel has a video diary there. It's frighteningly good. She's a really good actor.

The Horse wrote:

QUOTE:
1. Think About It
2. Bowie
3. The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room
4. Hip-Hopopotamus v Rhymenoceros
5. A Kiss Is Not A Contract

This may differ greatly from my previous top five, I can't be bothered to check.

Hip-Hopopotamus vs Rhymenoceros is great. It's not a parody of hip-hop, it's the characters' approximation of it. White folks attempting hip-hop frontin' isn't a very new gag for sure, but it's funny and would be destroyed instantly if the music were any more authentic or complex. Their music is always perfectly balanced between virtuosity (so you actually enjoy listening to it) and simplicity (so you can just about believe that the characters came up with it). An up-to-the-minute hip-hop production would be a disaster.

Not sure why the fact that it's 80s hip-hop and not 00s is a problem either.

Well, because it's holding hip hop to account for something it doesn't even do any more.

It's not holding hip-hop to account at all. Hip-hop isn't the butt of the joke.

Is Foux de Fafa's aping of 60s French pop a problem in a similar way? Or Think About It's echoes of 70s soul? How about Inner City Pressure - sounds a bit 80s. Shouldn't they be referencing Pet Shop Boys' latest work?

Meh. Fair enough. I still thought it was weak.

On this rare occasion on which SR finds himself on the "harsh" side of a comedy argument with the Horse, I reckon the Horse has it right.

Coincidentally, I've just watched all of these on DVD and I agree with everything SR says. "Hip-Hopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous" is the only song of theirs that's always fallen flat for me. It's rubbish; it doesn't really sound like hip hop from any era (there's a kind of vaguely G-funk feel at first, along with an old-school-ish rhythm track, then an Outkast sing-y bit) and it's generally just a bit embarassing and shit, especially next to their other stuff. Perhaps the problem with all hip hop parodies is that rapping is really fucking difficult, and quite different to conventional song.

Their dancehall reggae one, "Boom", is probably my favourite at the moment. It already had me on the ropes, but when the one with the mouth interjects with "fast forward selecta!" it was over. Although "Think About It" is also my favourite at the moment.

The DVD menu is really hypnotic as well - just the pair of them busting the same moves on a loop. I left the room to make a cuppa and when I got back my housemates were still transfixed by it.

QUOTE:
Perhaps the problem with all hip hop parodies is that rapping is really fucking difficult, and quite different to conventional song.

One of my favourite bits is where it suddenly, unaccountably gets really good, but then seamlessly moves back to stupidity: "They call me the Hip-Hopopotamus/Flows that glow like phosphorus/Popping off the top of this oesophagus/Rockin' this metropolis/I'm not a large water-dwelling mammal/Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?/Did Steve tell you that perchance?/Hmph . . . Steve".

I've definitely seen Diggedy Derek approvingly quote rhymes that were a lot less fly, bitchin' and crunky than the first bit of that.

Which is the equivalent of playing lots of fairly rubbish guitar notes to parody Slash. All in the delivery, isn't it.

And, none of the lyrics above make me laugh when written down either. Sorry.

But it's not really a parody. To whit:

QUOTE:
It's rubbish; it doesn't really sound like hip hop from any era (there's a kind of vaguely G-funk feel at first, along with an old-school-ish rhythm track, then an Outkast sing-y bit)

This makes it better, not worse, as discussed above.

OK then, it's the equivalent of playing lots of fairly rubbish guitar notes in a vaguely heavy metal/hard rock kind of style, which doesn't sound like any particular artist or era, or cohere into anything dynamic enough to be engaging enough to be amusing. Which is why it's not funny.

It's one of my favourite Conchords songs, but then again so many of them are really deftly done that most of them are my favourite Conchords songs.

I don't think its central joke is a parody of hip-hop nearly as much as it's taking the piss out of white boys (and specifically the characters of Jermaine and Brett) trying to adopt hip-hop stylings.

QUOTE:
OK then, it's the equivalent of playing lots of fairly rubbish guitar notes in a vaguely heavy metal/hard rock kind of style, which doesn't sound like any particular artist or era, or cohere into anything dynamic

Well, it's not totally incoherent, but some sloppiness is required because the characters in the show are (nominally) supposed to have come up with it.

Thinking about it (think thinking about it) I guess it is a bit more scattergun than a lot of their songs. More a pile of gags than a coherent whole. But what gags.