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.