IT’S ‘TURPIN’ TIME
Silly season: Noel Fielding as storied 18th century highwayman in new ‘Monty Python’-esque comedy
‘The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin” wastes no time letting the audience know that it is a very silly show.
The first episode of Noel Fielding’s new Apple TV+ series opens in England in 1735 at the very precise time of “just before bedtime.” Fielding’s version of legendary highwayman Dick Turpin is a purple-heeled vegan sweetheart who encourages the muscle man in his newfound gang to wear dresses. He pals around with a wee bartender named “Little Karen” and dons a bizarre costume to masquerade as a time-traveling version of himself during a heist. The jokes are aplenty, the laughs nonstop, and nothing is taken too seriously — except the show’s commitment to celebrating all things springing from the imagination.
“Turpin” is the kind of madcap show you could count on British comics making in the past, reminiscent of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” the irreverence of Rowan Atkinson’s “Blackadder” and the psychedelic splendor of Fielding’s first show, The Mighty Boosh. It’s also the kind of unapologetically blithe comedy you don’t see too often anymore.
Its specific brand of absurdity is a perfect match for British comic Fielding. While most Americans might best know him as the quirky co-host of The Great British Baking Show, comedy nerds associate him with the long-running comedy act, The Mighty Boosh. The Boosh started as a stage show starring Fielding and comedy partner Julian Barratt as eccentric zookeepers Vince Noir and Howard Moon. It soon expanded onto radio and became a global sensation as a television show in the early ’00s. While “The Mighty Boosh” was a cult hit in America, airing first on BBC America and later on Adult Swim, it was a far bigger deal in the UK.
“People like Billy Bragg would say, ‘The Boosh’ is what brought my family together. We all watch it together. It’s like our sort of family show that we all watch,’” Fielding said.
In an ironic twist, Fielding wasn’t the creative mind to come up with the concept of Dick Turpin. Instead, long-time British producer Kenton Allen stumbled upon the idea for “The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin” by playing a “game” in his office. Basically, he and his cohorts would name an iconic figure and come up with a slightly not obvious actor to play them.
“Anyway, somebody said, ‘Who would play Dick Turpin?’ and my colleague, Victoria, went, ‘It’s obviously Noel Fielding,’” Allen said.
The reason Victoria naturally put notorious 18th century horse-thief, highwayman, and murderer Dick Turpin and the gentle, odd, and hilarious Noel Fielding together has to do with Turpin’s legacy in British culture. During Turpin’s trial, a chapbook was hastily pulled together by writer Richard Bayes to capitalize off of the public’s interest in the criminal. There were multiple fabrications about Turpin published there, and over the years other writers seized upon the more colorful fables attributed to him. Soon, he morphed into a roguish dandy and was considered, as a character, like an 18th century analogue to Robin Hood.
“Turpin” continually nods to this history, both with its cheeky title and Dolly Wells’s pamphlet-writing character, Eliza Bean. What Fielding brings to the role is his own unique personality. His Dick Turpin leaves home because his veganism precludes him from following in his father’s footsteps as a butcher. He travels around with a ludicrously small sewing machine, dresses up in bizarre costumes, and orders peppermint tea at the pub. Fielding imbues Dick Turpin with a kindness that rubs off on the people around him and inspires loyalty from his Essex gang.
Fielding said that this kind, inclusive brand of comedy is indeed by design, and partially inspired by his real life role as a father to two young children. “Especially when you have kids, yeah, you do think about those things a little bit,” Fielding said. “But I was always really intrigued by comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld, and Owen Wilson and people who are charming, but not necessarily mean.”