Russell Baillie: Last laugh

This Sunday bro'Town is screening its last ever show. Photo / Supplied

So that's it then. We're all out of laughter. The comedy festival is into its last weekend, Flight of the Conchords finished its second and possibly last series and this Sunday bro'Town is screening its last ever show after five seasons.

Even the mildly amusing - but too clever and on too late for its own good - Diplomatic Immunity is about to shut up shop in a week or two.

It seems there will be no more New Zealand comedy until further notice.

The finish of Flight of the Conchords - barring HBO signing them up for a third season despite their reported reluctance - and bro'Town is an end of the golden weather moment.

Maybe bro'town kept going past its creative peak and was often guilty of relying on variations of the same storylines and devices - like those celebrity cameos, which included FOTC's Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie in a recent episode. (Just hope that John Campbell will have enough to do with himself now that's he's not popping down the hall every week to record yet another appearance.)

But creating the first New Zealand primetime animated comedy is still a remarkable achievement. So is how it's clearly affected the sense of humour of an entire generation, the way Fred Dagg and Billy T James did for mine. And if you, like me, grew up in Morningside - there's more than one in this country - hearing "Morningside 4 Life" for one last time is sure to make you a little sadder to see it go.

Talking of our comedy ancestors, there seemed something almost archaeological to the Flight of the Conchords' final show on Monday.

It started with a domestic percussion theme which recalled the Front Lawn - the folk-comedy duo of Don McGlashan and Harry Sinclair - and their show The Reason for Breakfast which involved much tinkling of jam jars and singing.

It ended back in Taranaki with a spot of tuneful farm fence twanging which recalled that classic Country Calendar spoof from the black and white days of NZ telly. FOTC went out, it seems, paying a tribute to their roots, and quite brilliant it was too.

Yeah, a few weeks back this column suggested FOTC's second series had really gone off the boil. That was after seeing lacklustre mid-season episodes Love is a Weapon of Choice and Unnatural Love - as the titles suggest both about the pair's long-established hopelessness with women, one of them extremely Australian.

Admittedly, the first was directed by Michel Gondry (the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind among other patchier brain-benders) and came with songs Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor and Carol Brown (Stick Around), which are among the best tracks - and accompanying clips - this season has produced. Though musically, this season hasn't reached the heights of the first where the pair had an album's worth of material ready to inspire the storylines.

Still, comedically speaking the final episodes have been an absolute hoot - especially for the folks back home. There was New Zealand Town, in which our esteemed Prime Minister Brian, established said ethnic neighbourhood in Manhattan with the help of his no-nonsense assistant Paula (Lucy Lawless in a hilarious is-that-really-her performance).

Maybe because they needed some help with the New Zealand Town celebrity sheep and having more than two sets of Kiwi vowels, that one was directed by Taika Waititi who also directed a couple of stand-out episodes in the first season. Waititi was back for this week's finale too, Evicted, which not only managed the aforementioned sideshow of NZ comedy history but had the pair in an off-Broadway musical about their adventures thus far, written by Murray who cribbed bits of it from Star Wars.

If this was FOTC farewelling their sitcom days, it was a terrific final bow. There was enough hilarity to get through the coming comedy slump. And if it wasn't the end, a third series comes with a promising start - just how they are going to get those boys off the farm and back to twangin' guitars rather than fences? Yep, FOTC has gone down to the wire.