Random Acts of Flyness
Terence Nance's Provocative Series Hits HBO
The hottest new sketch comedy series is Random Acts of Flyness, HBO‘s racially-charged sketch show from Terence Nance. Nance is best known for his 2012 directorial debut, the surreal, romantically existential, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty.
Six years later, Nance’s HBO series recently launched its six-episode season premiere, and, by all accounts, Random Acts of Flyness is worth the wait. Nance deserves every ounce of praise he’s been receiving for his ambitious, socially-relevant, and utterly hilarious take on the sketch comedy genre.
A high velocity skewering of modern Americana through a series of humorous vignettes, documentary segments, musical performances, and melodramatic moments which interconnect in surprising ways, Flyness makes clever statements about race relations in the USA, as relayed through the accessibly entertaining lens of comedy.
The show feels less inspired by Saturday Night Live and Mad TV than it reminds us of an Andy Warhol fever dream – but blacker – or the seminal Jean-Luc Goddard documentary, Sympathy for the Devil, with its surreal sketches and acknowledgement of its era juxtaposed with a creator’s story. While Terence Nance appears in every episode (which he also co-writes and directs), the cast is a veritable “who’s who” of famous faces, from Whoopi Goldberg and Jon Hamm to Gillian Jacobs and Dominique Fishback of The Deuce.
Random Acts of Flyness airs Fridays on HBO.
