There is a type of humor that is very specific to the UK. It's this often dry, physically chaotic and word dense comedy that is very difficult to pull off well. But when it happens, you get TV shows such as Monty Python or Blackadder.
The Completely Made-Up Adventures Of Dick Turpin is premiering on Apple TV+ on Friday, March 1st and the six-episode season hits all of the right notes. It's funny and clever. Filled equally with dumb sight gags and wordplay that can be so complex you need to have a thesaurus close at end.
The series stars Noel Fielding as Dick Turpin, a highway who in real life was apparently not the nicest fellow. But in this "completely made-up adventure," Turpin is a bit of a well-meaning buffoon, surrounded by a murderer's row of great British comic and character actors.
American audiences likely know Fielding from his role on The Great British Bake Off or perhaps on the comedy The Mighty Boosh. But this show feels like the one that might make him more of a household comedic name in the United States.
Producer Kenton Allen has had a long run of producing shows in the UK, including Raised By Wolves, Houdini & Doyle, Cold Feet & The Outlaws.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Fielding and Kenton Allen in person (see the video above) and to describe the conversation as "wide-ranging" is a bit of an understatement. We managed to discuss camera lenses, the rock band Cream and the challenges of being both evil and a parent forced to bring their child to work with them.
The interview below has been lightly edited for clarity:
Q: In the panel you did earlier today for TV critics, there were a number of questions asking you about your influences for this show. Which is a bit difficult, because it's not as if you go into this thinking "I'd like to do a show that feels like Pirates Of The Caribbean."
That being said, one influence that struck me watching the show is Pee Wee Herman.
Fielding: I love Pee-Wee Herman.
Q: Dick Turpin is a very optimistic person. Sometimes dangerously so. He's very innocent and he tends to want to think the best of people and he's a little innocent. And this show has a similar vibe to it.
Noel Fielding: I do love Pee Wee Herman. I think what he did was absolutely amazing and visually incredible. So it's always there in the back, Pee Wee. He's always hanging around in my subconscious. So I hope some of that came through.
Q: I think one of the challenges of a show like that is that you have to get the tone just right. There's physical jokes, there's wordplay humor. From a production perspective, how do you find that balance throughout the show? How do you say to someone that they're a bit off of where you need them to be? Because it can easily become campy or awkward?
Kenton Allen: Noel is the center of the show. So it's understanding that a lot of the tone comes from Noel. And why is Noel in the show, if not to allow for this tonal flexes at times.
But it is also about the direction. Ben Palmer, who directed the show, who directed the pilot from scratch, took this approach of shooting pretty much everything on a 29-millimeter lens. Which gives everything this incredibly hyper-real feel. Which you don't really notice. We don't usually talk about lens sizes in interviews. But it does give everything a very classic..
Noel Fielding: I love podcasts about lens sizes...
Kenton Allen: It's Ben Palmer. It's the casting director, it's costume design. The production design. The make-up design. And it's Noel as your leading man, setting that tone.
Noel Fielding: It's interesting that you talk about the tone because that is something on The Mighty Boosh that we worked out very early on. If the tone wasn't exactly right it somehow didn't work.
I was very worried about playing the lead in this and working out how funny to be. I wanted to figure out from the audience's perspective what would work. Because there are a lot of eccentric performances, a lot of big performances. Brilliant performances. But quite hyper-real.
So I realized I had to play it quite naturalistic. Not low-key. But I had to bring a sense of reality to it even though the show is quite surreal. There has to be an element of reality to my performance in order to allow for all of those other more eccentric performances to live.
It's like with the Seinfeld show. Jerry does such great work. Because Kramer is doing all of this business and George is doing the same. But the show needs him to play the way that he is reacting to those things. It makes those other things come alive as well.
Q: One of the interesting challenges for you is that you have to sublimate your ambition. You can think "Oh, this would be a great place for a joke," or "if I did this, it would be funny." But it would take away from another character.
Noel Fielding: Exactly. I have to say, I really wanted to play Asim Chaudhry's part (Craig The Warlock) because it's such a weird character. And you can't do that when you're one of the main characters. You have to center things, you have hold things together somehow. You make some choices about performance-wise, where to come in at. And you're praying that it's okay and that it's not too little or too much.
Kenton Allen: And you're praying that everyone in the cast is in the same show as well. There's a real art to that, to making sure that everyone is in the same comedic universe.
Q: That's one of the challenges of an ensemble show like this. Someone comes in and they're doing their thing. Which is great. But it's not your thing, it's not what you're looking for.
Kenton Allen: And that's the thing with Jess Hines, who plays the Hag in episode four. She's coming in and playing a fire-breathing witch. So she went through a whole process of trying to get that right. To match the tone of the show. And we really had to trust her to get that right and give her the space to find it.
Noel Fielding: She always does and we had the confidence she would. But there's always a sense of "you go and find it..."
Kenton Allen: "...and bring us your witch."
Q: To a certain extent, it's almost like back in the Seventies when they would form these "super groups." And most of the time, honestly, they kinda sucked. Because they were musicians who were really talented individually. But when you'd get them together, they'd argue over who got to do the guitar solo.
Noel Fielding: Like Cream. The interesting thing about Cream is that you've got Ginger Baker, who is one of the greatest drummers. And Jack Bruce is really showing off. But Clapton is actually quite low-key. In a weird way - he's probably the lead talent in that band - but he sort of understands how to make that chemistry work between those three.
Kenton Allen: Or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. (to Noel) In this analogy, are you Joni Mitchell and all the other actors are... (they both laugh).
Q: I think that's an entirely different show.
Kenton Allen: The idea was to have this depth of British cast. This supergroup of established British comic names, like Hugh Bonneville (Jonathan Wild), Tamsin Greig (Lady Helen Gwinear) and Asim Chaudhry (Craig the Warlock). And the next generation coming through, like Joe Wilkinson (Geoffrey the Gaoler) and Ellie White (Nell Brazier). Just bringing the best of our comedy world to an American audience.
Noel Fielding: I like the doubles act. I loved working with Julian because I like to feed off someone else and I like to react to someone else. And with Hugh Bonneville I realized we had quite a good doubles act. And you can't really manufacture that. You either have it or you don't. He's very high status as a clown and I'm quite low status as a clown, so there was quite a complimentary doubles act going on there. Which made it very easy for me to work with him.
But I think what you're trying to do all the time is work out how you can be funny and the other person can be funny in the same scene. And the same with Ellie or Mark.
Kenton Allen: ....The alchemy is always tricky
Noel Fielding: Right, you're trying to work out the best tone for the both of you to be funny but doing what you do naturally. Without making it look a little bit, as you say, eccentric.
Q: We've all seen these shows where you're watching it and thinking, "yikes."
Noel Fielding: It can go into a drift fast if you're not careful.
Kenton Allen: It's a high-wire tightrope act that can go wrong but I think if Noel's at the heart of it than Noel sort of gets his comic genius and where he's at.
Noel Fielding: And I'm quite lowkey and laid back as well. If you have someone who's very frantic in the lead as well, then you need to surround that person with lots of slightly straighter, slightly more subtle performances.
But I think what we've done with this is that I'm quite calm and laidback and charming. So that means that we can have quite a lot of eccentric peripheral characters who are doing a lot of business and a lot of interesting stuff.
I think it has to be one or the other really, you can't have...
Kenton Allen: ...You can't have everyone be lead guitarist or be the lead.
Q: Before I let you go, I wanted to ask about one of the smaller characters in the show, who feels like he's really doing an origin story for a future show. Christian, the little kid who's following his evil dad around at work. But he's always saying the wrong thing or eating a bug?
Noel Fielding: He's amazing. He's getting tall now, that's the problem. He's about my height now. But he's really good.
He's teamed up with Hugh Bonneville's character and the idea is that he has to bring him along because he can't find childcare. It's such a great joke.
There's something really nice about that relationship. We knew it was going to work for Hugh and that it was going to run through the series. And he's a good actor.
Kenton Allen: He is a good actor. And he knows his dad's a dick and let's him know that subtly all the time.
Noel Fielding: But they have a nice relationship.
Kenton Allen: You can be the Thief Taker General, but you still have parental responsibilities.
Noel Fielding: It's a great switch, from being evil to talking to his son about moths or whatever he's interested in.
Q: I guess the lesson is that it's never easy being a parent.
