The blessing of being a comedian from New Zealand is that your accent will make anything you say sound funny to American ears, whether you intend it or not. The curse is that your naturally laid-back attitude and innate stoicism will cause some people to question your career choice altogether.
“People are always surprised to hear that I’m a comedian,” said Jemaine Clement, a shaggy, low-key New Zealander with ample sideburns and a pair of Elvis Costello glasses, who is one-half of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords. “Like, people will say: ‘But you’re not funny. You don’t even talk.'”
Clement and his performing partner, Bret McKenzie, agree that they were perhaps not the best representatives of how their countrymen really behave.
“Jemaine and I are both particularly understated,” said McKenzie, 30, a lower-key Wellington native with a beard. “When we’re hanging out with other New Zealanders, we’re still two of the quieter ones.”
Clement, 33, who grew up near Wellington in the town of Masterton, said: “Sometimes people think we aren’t interested in things when we are. It’s just that we don’t express it. There’s a very different energy level between the average New Zealander and the average American.”
That hasn’t discouraged HBO from giving McKenzie and Clement their own series, called “Flight of the Conchords,” that makes its debut at 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
It follows the adventures of two New Zealanders named Bret and Jemaine, recently relocated to downtown New York, who play in a band called Flight of the Conchords, as they endure mundane indignities, compete over women and sometimes break into song.
Beneath their relaxed demeanors, they are both motivated, determined performers. In the mid-1990s, while they were still students at Victoria University of Wellington, they toured New Zealand and Australia with a five-member comedy act called “So You’re a Man.”
At a time when their island nation was still largely served by just three TV channels, and homegrown production was scarce, they found their comedic influences in offbeat imports like “Blackadder” and “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.”
After rotating through comedy troupes with names like the Humourbeasts, Mc-Kenzie and Clement began performing under the name Flight of the Conchords, playing slyly satirical songs (often about their affections for the opposite sex) on acoustic guitars and bantering between numbers. Their music paid homage to the eclectic funk and rock artists they had grown up listening to, including James Brown, Prince, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
“It was always going to be a strange band,” McKenzie said. “It might have been a very different story if we ended up playing rock venues. We just ended up playing comedy clubs.”
In 2002, the Conchords played their first Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and they returned there twice more to increasing interest from the U.S. and British comedy industries.
“After three years,” McKenzie said, “we achieved what would normally take people four years.”
Clement added, “We bypassed a year.”
As they finish work on an album for indie label Sub Pop and prepare for a short tour, the two almost are able to feign enthusiasm about their career prospects.
“We joke about using the money we earned to build a school for New Zealand children to learn musical comedy,” Mc-Kenzie said.
Clement, who may or may not have been joking, said, “A friend of my girlfriend’s was telling her to tell me off, for all the bad musical comedy duos that have started after we became successful.”
McKenzie added, “It’s now seen as a guaranteed way to get out of the country.”
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Curt’s take
Flight of the Conchords
9:30 p.m. Sunday HBO
Tenacious D meets “Extras” in this hilarious new comedy series starring spoof musicians Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. The New Zealanders move to New York seeking fame and women. They stumble through their daily lives, occasionally breaking into deadpan songs. (Sample lyric: “I’m not crying. It’s just raining … on my face.”) I would call it a musical comedy for straight guys, but I want everyone to watch.
