Boosh from a Flat in Darkest Dalston Release Season 3

Transforming from cult favorite to international sensation, surrealist comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh offer up a third season, employing the familiar blend of anarchic fantasy and bizarre musical numbers to once more wreak their own singular brand of havoc on the unsuspecting laws of time, space, and good taste. Continuing to follow the adventures and mishaps of hapless duo Howard Moon (Barratt) and Vince Noir, still desperately trying to raise the profile of their shambolic musical act (the titular Mighty Boosh), season three ushers in yet another change of venue.

Still sponging off the swiftly evaporating goodwill of super-cool shaman Naboo the Enigma, and his ape familiar Bollo, Boosh v3.0 takes place predominantly in the newly opened “Nabootique,” a second hand thrift store in Dalston. The banter is still comically banal, the stories still silly, and the costumes and make-up of the loony characters utterly irresistible. Yet there is something oddly muted about season three, brought about by the tight-fisted BBC slashing the budget on this third season. Where as previous seasons took in such trippy locales as the desert, the Arctic Tundra, and the Planet Xooberon, much of this season is contained within the confines of the store, which all too often begs to be blown open and for things to really cut loose.

There are high points of course, such as a welcome return for the grotesque green skinned Cockney demon The Hitcher – a cross between the Wicked Witch of the West and Fagan from Oliver Twist – who terrorizes Howard with threats of eels via a swift tinkle of the “Joanna.” Also back is the fabled Spirit of Jazz, which invades Vince’s bloodstream and will cause death by Scat if not removed, forcing Naboo to miniaturize Howard for an impromptu Innerspace-style adventure. The magnificently batty Board of Shaman are also back, including psycho pre-teen Kirk, perennially exasperated bladder Tony Harrison, and Saboo, Richard Ayoade’s brilliantly bitchy rival to Naboo.

New characters come in the form of The Crackfox, who ambushes Vince and steals Naboo’s bottle of Shaman juice forcing Howard and Vince to leap into action before Naboo and Bollo are executed as punishment. Disasters strike as Boosh imposters Lance Dior and Harold Boom land the cover of Cheekbone magazine and steal the gig Howard and Vince had booked at The Velvet Onion, and there is only one way to settle a feud of that magnitude – a crimp-off!

Wild, zany, and unapologetically trippy, Boosh works because of a commitment to the craziness, where no hint of camp, irony, or winking to the camera is permitted to break the spell. Like Monty Python on acid, Barratt and Fielding are of the mindset that you don’t need rules, plot, story, or structure, you just need to be funny, inviting the audience to bend to a creative freedom that literally knows no limits. Still, constrained by a lack of financing there remains an air of unfulfilled potential that no amount of relentless shoestring set juggling can overcome, and the scope of season three remains at times frustratingly limited. We can only hope that the delay in writing season four, due to other commitments, offers enough time for The Beeb to reconsider, as Boosh is a show that definitely requires total free reign in order to function optimally. In the words of the all-knowing, all-seeing Naboo: “Now let that be a lesson to you.”