Kiwi musical comics Two Hearts pick their Perfect Playlist

New Zealand comedy duo Two Hearts – aka  Laura Daniel  and Joseph Moore – start their Edinburgh Fringe show Til Death Do Us Hearts tonight. Here they share their Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Maybe the funniest movie ever made. This came out while we were starting Two Hearts and was extremely influential on us.  It’s big and dumb, extremely heartwarming, and the songs are so obnoxiously funny. 

The Lonely Island strike the perfect balance of making fun of pop-music/rap while simultaneously respecting the shit out of it, and that’s what we strive to do too.

The Four Phantoms

This is not a comedy piece per se. It’s Andrew Lloyd Webber introducing Nicole Scherzinger from the Pussycat Dolls to sing Phantom of the Opera at the London Variety Performance in 2011. The catch? She sings it with four Phantoms simultaneously. 

The optics on this are crazy, it’s the creepy/predatory vibes of Phantom - multiplied by four. Someone save this woman from these four phantoms! Yet it’s also beautiful?? 

We generally don’t get through a week without watching this, normally when we have guests around. They know who they are and they read Chortle.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

Like many people who don’t live in Europe, this Netflix movie was our introduction to Eurovision. Had never seen a second of it before watching this, it’s a testament to how well the film works that we still loved it despite not knowing really anything about what it was parodying. 

Maybe it was that we related far too heavily to the lead characters (a male/female pop duo who get together at the end, and also the woman is way better at singing). We have since become big Eurovision-heads, catching ourselves saying things like ‘Norway have done themselves a disservice this year, there were much better entries in the national finals.’ It’s pathetic.

Natalia Kills and Willy Moon bullying someone on X-Factor New Zealand and getting fired

This is an historic moment in New Zealand television, and is up there with the Four Phantoms as a regular-must-play. 

No one really knows how or why it happened. Natalia Kills is a British pop singer married to a New Zealand musician, they had albums hit 139 and 75 respectively on the UK charts, which meant they were fast tracked to being judges on NZ X Factor. 

Apparently no one vetted them, and they went crazy on live television, relentlessly bullying one of the contestants for plagiarising Willy’s look (wearing a suit). It was the most savage reaction to a normal guy in a suit singing Feeling Good.

 The New Zealand public, in turn, bullied them back by demanding their firing and chasing them out of the country the next day. There was press at the airport documenting them leaving. 

The internet went crazy. Ed Sheeran sent bullied contestant cupcakes. It was a wonderful two days, and some unhinged television that we love to revisit.

New Zealand Today

A little biassed as Joseph directed some of this show as part of his day job (below is  a clip he had nothing to do with to clear our conscience here). 

But Guy Williams is so brilliant, and paints such a vibrant picture of small-town New Zealand on this show, how he finds his guests and gets them to open up is an absolute mystery. 

It’s been a few years since Joseph worked on NZ Today and we still watch every ep, and hope they keep making it while we base ourselves in the UK so we can keep abreast of the most important issues facing our country. 

30 Rock

Sorry this answer isn’t exciting! One day, when a show tops 30 Rocks for laugh-out-loud gags per minute, we will replace it. But so far that hasn’t happened.

• Two Hearts: Til Death Do Us Hearts are on at Pleasance Courtyard at 11pm.

Published: 31 Jul 2024