Rhys Darby: The Legend Returns
Prior to the start of his UK theatre tour a few months ago, New Zealand actor and comedian, Rhys Darby was interviewed on Radio 4 one Saturday morning. He was asked about his comedy influences. He started talking about growing up in Auckland, watching British TV with his mother, and - certainly to my surprise - the one show he quoted was The Goodies.
The Goodies were Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and the late Tim Brooke-Taylor, and for 12 years from 1970 were a permanent fixture on our TV screens. The premise of the show was that they were an agency offering to do "anything, anywhere, any time" but this was simply an excuse for madcap adventures, any manner of silliness, usually a song, and always travelling on a three-seater bicycle known as a 'trandem’. It sounds lame, and I did once overhear someone describe The Goodies as Monty Python for gumbies. I’d have to disagree, Monty Python was The Goodies for dicks.
Like most people, my starting point for Rhys Darby was his portrayal of hapless band manager Murray Hewitt in Flight of the Conchords. After that, Angus Nutsford in 2009 pirate radio drama The Boat That Rocked, but, to be honest, the next thing I saw him in was 2022 queer pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death. In the intervening years he’s packed in loads - Jumanji, What We Do In The Shadows, loads of voicework for TV and his popular podcast The Cryptid Factor.
Darby’s show at Edinburgh’s Pleasance is the culmination of an extensive UK tour, his return to stand up after a break of 13 years, and it’s very clear this is something that he loves. The influence of the Goodies is there from the start with silliness, physical comedy, ludicrous sound effects. and all done with the great enthusiasm. The show is ostensibly about the rise of A.I. but the subject hardly matters.
However, there’s another British comedy influence in the mix. The Goodies were a mid-week thing, Thursday nights if I remember correctly, with the real BBC heavyweights kept back for Saturdays. The Two Ronnies - Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett - were much loved, and the formula of their show never changed. A few sketches, the two of them reading spoof news, a comedy serial and, as a finale, a song-&-dance number where they would dress up as women. But immediately prior to that dubious dig at cross-dressers, Ronnie Corbett would sit in a massive black armchair and tell a long story which would go off at any number of tangents, looping back to early parts of the narrative, before reaching its conclusion. On occasions this was side-splittingly funny.
I wonder if, like The Goodies, The Two Ronnies was exported to New Zealand in the 1970s. The climax of Darby’s show is a near 20 minute tale about his Roomba vacuum cleaner which has all the hallmarks of a Ronnie Corbett story, picking up on all the loose ends scattered throughout the earlier part of the evening. I didn’t want it to finish but finish it did to rapturous applause.
Old school comedy for the 21st century. The legend has returned.