I may have been the only person who hadn’t already seen Flight of the Conchords by the time it premiered on HBO last night. For the past month, the first episode has been available at HBO.com and, by some unknown means of coercion, absolutely everyone seemed to have written about it. I did not.

Bret and Jemaine had a pretty rough handicap with me. I’m not generally a fan of comedians who pepper their shtick with music, and a solid 30 minutes of New Zealander accents isn’t a very enticing pitch either, but Conchords was actually pretty funny. It follows the journey of transplanted buddies in New York’s East Village. Like New York comedies of past, neither seem to have a job or any other source of income – at least their apartment is appropriately modest. For support, they have an overzealous and creepy fan and a dippy manager who echoes a little too strongly of Extras’ Darren.

When their intentionally expressionless faces and monotone voices become almost too much, they burst into song. They sing about falling in love, the heartache of rejection… and robots. It seems like we should have heard these songs before, but the dry absurdity is distinctly their own. Jermaine’s falsetto is a much more welcome vehicle for musical comedy than your Jimmy Fallons and your Adam Sandlers.

Though the Conchords may be better suited to the short MTV promos of the 90s or a recurring Saturday Night Live skit, they don’t overstay their welcome like they easily could. The show drags a little in between the surrealist musical interludes but not enough to fully turn away. And with Entourage apparently still very much steeped in all things Medellín, Flight of the Conchords is a comedy on HBO actually worth watching.