Space Couch: A Live Comedy Chat Show

Tim Batt and Dis­astera­di­o’s Space Couch is a syn­thwave Com­mun­ist talk­show, and I don’t think those words have ever been uttered togeth­er in a sen­tence before. Things go like this. The tit­u­lar pink Space Couch – sent into space by the Sovi­ets in the mid-70s – has fallen back to earth and decided to host a talk show, com­plete with Kiwi com­ics, some bomb music, and polit­ic­al guests.

Tim takes the mic as the host, intro­du­cing seg­ments and con­duct­ing inter­views, as well as doing a bit of stand-up besides, and Dis­astera­dio (Luke Row­ell) strings the whole piece togeth­er with some qual­ity vapor­wave (??) music. The Space Couch inter­jects with some thor­oughly Soviet pro­pa­ganda every so often.

It’s a good time.

Space Couch is a talk show without the hyper­activ­ity of com­mon long-form con­tent, and that’s a good thing. Though things got a little hairy last night dur­ing Tim’s chat with Paula Ben­nett about the marijuana ref­er­en­dum, and the audi­ence got a little vocal, but there’s no mad­cap jump­ing on chairs or awk­ward long-form bits (re: Jimmy Fal­lon, James Corden and the like) and the whole thing just feels very genu­ine.

Dis­astera­di­o’s music and gen­er­al banter really con­trib­utes to the chill vibe of the show, and he and Tim have a great rap­port on a whole. It’s a treat to hear a lot of ori­gin­al sound on stage, and I really appre­ci­ated it.

Last night’s guests were Eli Math­ewson (the Kiwi comedi­an, cur­rently per­form­ing his show Myth and Legend in Wel­ling­ton as well), and divis­ive Nation­al Party politi­cian Paula Ben­nett. Eli riffed mostly on Spi­der­m­an and then sat down on the couch to take Tim and Dis­astera­dio through a game (roughly titled) This News Will Shock You, where the hosts had to guess the end­ing of a news story, with the own­er of the worst guess being shocked by an elec­tric dog col­lar.

Good times.

Paula Ben­nett then came on and the show got a little more tense – wherein she and Tim mostly talked (if that’s the word for it) about the upcom­ing marijuana reform. Though the pair had nev­er met before in real life, the inter­view was sur­pris­ingly unawk­ward, so major props to Tim for belay­ing a poten­tially-ter­ri­fy­ing seg­ment right along.

The show ended with a few ‘ads’ – one of the best being a promo video for John­son­ville (“It’s a sub­urb that exists in Wel­ling­ton”), and the issu­ing of an A4 of the Com­mie News – a play on the Cof­fee News leaf­let – which clearly took quite some time to make up. The Space Couch also seemed to renounce com­mun­ism for a bit and signed on for a lead role in a Hol­ly­wood talk show.

Space Couch is a bizarre trek into the unknown, a little chaot­ic, but a hell of a good time.

Space Couch is on at San Fran from now until Sat­urday. Get your tick­ets from the Com­edy Fest­iv­al web­site.