The Mighty Boosh season three episode four review (Crack Fox)

Now this is more like it! After the very style/fashion/culture-based self-congratulatory episode of last week, the Boosh once again jumps into the world of whimsy with the strange tale of the very nasty Crack Fox. This show sees the return of the naïve Vince we all know and love – his lack of knowledge of the mythical refuse collection people known as ‘Bin-Men’ was genius. As was Howard’s Jazzercise, which was as much fun you can have while watching a sweating middle aged man with a sax without having to go into one of those ‘specialist’ shops.

Some people might say that the Boosh crew are relying too much on former glories, and this episode does retread some familiar ground. The Shamans make their second appearance so far this season, and it could be argued that the writers are running out of ideas. A change of tack could be in order – a Shaman spinoff show, anyone? While the bickering between Tony Harrison and Zaboo still raises a smile, maybe people becoming bored of them. Not me, though; I think that this rag-tag group of magic makers are just genius and loved that it was the Head-Shamans turn to shine this week. His inability to have a drink or two, or to have any tolerance for any other ‘Shamanistic’ stimulants is a running joke that adds a whole lot to these guys. However, all Shaman-y stuff is, of course, overshadowed by a new cult hero in the form of Kirk, whose spaced out one liners are just getting better and better.

The story focuses on the refusal of Vince to put the bins out and his subsequent meeting with a whole new and very scary bad guy – the Crack Fox. After the obligatory, non-Bafta winning, origin cartoon (we are getting a lot of those this series, aren’t we?) Vince is conned into taking the Crack Fox in and in the process has a bottle of Naboo’s Shaman Juice stolen from under his nose. It is up to the dynamic duo to return the Shaman juice before Naboo is executed for, well, being a pot-head!

The Crack Fox is the stuff of nightmares. While you can can tell it’s Julian Barrett by the voice, there is so much prosthetic work, fur and sinister finger-needles involved that it’s tricky to see him under the layers and scary exterior. However, all this spooky going on and imminent death doesn’t really matter as Vince has a new cloak; and as everyone knows, if you have a new (and especially shiny) cloak, losing your best mate, the death of a colleague, a gorilla playing a electronic organ solo in a cage and a former upper class piece of vulpine evil urban vermin looking to create a army of rodents to take over the world using the power of Shaman juice just doesn’t matter! Go on, just look at the shiny colours… wheeee!

Sorry, got a bit carried away there with all the glitter, mind-altering substances and return to form of the show. Overall, this was some top notch Boosh-goodness and while in many ways it mirrored Season 2’s episode Nannageddon it was still better than the over indulgent celeb-driven pap we had last week. There was only thing missing. Where was Rich Fulcher?