![Sunita Mani and Paul Dano in Fantasmas](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/08/01/TELEMMGLPICT000386424540_17225006699780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Fantasmas, review: Emma Stone and Tilda Swinton can’t save America’s oddest comedy
Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres has created a Mighty Boosh-esque world of surreal whimsy – but too few laugh-out-loud moments
![Sunita Mani and Paul Dano in Fantasmas](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2024/08/01/TELEMMGLPICT000386424540_17225006699780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Fantasmas (Sky Comedy) is the oddest show of the year. Its creator, Julio Torres, won’t mind me saying that. He’s trying to be odd. The oddness is the point. An example of what I mean: it’s set in an alternative universe which has a Studio 54-style nightclub for gay hamsters in fetish-wear. Imagine the vibe of The Mighty Boosh, but American and expensive.
I didn’t like The Mighty Boosh, which means I don’t like this, but perhaps surrealist humour is your thing. Torres is a writer for Saturday Night Live in the US, and is the writer, director and executive producer of Fantasmas. It begins with him turning up for an interview at the Crayola factory, where a panel asks him to do impressions of various colours before he pitches his big idea: making a clear crayon.
There is a very vague plot, in which the pixie-ish, perpetually anxious Julio searches for a lost earring. We are introduced to recurring characters in his life, including his vampish agent (really a “performance artist” in character as an agent), his robot companion and his cab driver. In each episode we’re also taken inside the TV shows that Julio is watching, and these bits play out as little sketches, usually with capitalism and the workplace as a theme.
Occasionally, these are funny, such as the lifestyle influencer (Jaboukie Young-White) who makes content sponsored by an “all-gender-inclusive germ killer”; when this influencer’s friend points out that he won’t be young forever and TikTok won’t provide a life-long career, he sobs: “You’re insane!” Bowen Yang is good as a disgruntled elf taking Santa to court. More often, though, the sketches aren’t funny even though they should be, including a spoof of the Real Housewives franchise which features Oscar-winner Emma Stone.
Stone, one of the executive producers here, isn’t the only big name. Torres certainly has pulling power – Tilda Swinton voices some water in a toilet bowl. Meanwhile, Steve Buscemi appears in the best sketch. He plays the letter “Q” as an angry punk who thinks he should be hanging out at the end of the alphabet with the renegade “W”, “X”, “Y” and “Z” instead of being stuck between the mainstream “P” and “R”. This plays out in a comedy club, where he’s one of the acts and complains about his billing: “You’ve got me sandwiched between these two normies! I’m not accessible like that, that’s why you’ve got to put me on late.”
The Buscemi sketch is an example of Torres’s inventive writing. But it’s all a bit self-consciously hip and whimsical for me.
Fantasmas begins on Sky Comedy at 9pm tonight; the boxset is available on Now