The two hundred and fourty-second TV show: #663 The Mighty Boosh
How real can a sophomore slump season get? The Mighty Boosh's first season was a fun surreal comedy, with some good recurring bits that pushed it too far every once in a while, but it generally worked. The third season builds on that - slightly more through lines, more different roles for the actors, but the surreal core that still works well. The middle season, howeve,r, doesn't work as well. The setting has less to go on - the zoo of the first season and shop of the third grounds it, but the second season misses a lot of that. The acting is as much of a problem, though. The performances were never the best, but the second season relies a lot more on Michael Fielding's Naboo. While he probably has a bigger role behind the scenes, his quite flat performance works better as a minor side character than carrying large parts of the storylines like in that season. It requires a lot of confidence to pull off the comedy in the show, and while Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding can pull it off, as well as the support of Rich Fulcher and Richard Ayode, there are points in the show where it lacks this confidence, and it is to its detriment.