Originally published 2018-09-15.
What would a nightclub look like if David Attenborough’s film crew had wandered in by mistake? New Zealand comedy group Viva La Dirt League answered that question with a short sketch that films a bar full of young people as if it were a wildlife documentary. A hushed, very British narrator, played by a sound-alike rather than Attenborough himself, follows a nervous young male as he tries, and fails, to catch the eye of a group of females. The full video is below, followed by the story of the troupe behind it.
Watch the nightclub wildlife documentary
The sketch went round social media in May 2018, when sites such as Laughing Squid shared it, and it appears to have been circulated under the title Clubbing in the Wild. It runs just a few minutes and needs no knowledge of gaming, the group’s usual subject. Viva La Dirt League also posted it on YouTube.
What happens in the sketch
The camera watches from a distance, the way a nature crew might film animals at a watering hole. A small band of young men gathers near the bar while the narrator explains their behaviour in calm, reverent tones. Encouraged by his companions, the youngest of the group is pushed forward to try his luck.
His strategy is cautious. Rather than walking over, he attempts to make contact from across the room, staring hopefully in the direction of the women. They do not respond. Unsettled and clearly out of his depth, he gives up and slinks back to the safety of the other males, while the narrator notes his inexperience with the sympathy of a scientist watching a fledgling fall out of a nest.
Nothing dramatic happens, and that is the point. A moment that thousands of people have lived through on an ordinary Friday night is narrated as if it were a rare and important natural event.
Why the Planet Earth style is so easy to parody
The target is the BBC series Planet Earth, first shown on BBC One in March 2006 and narrated in the UK by David Attenborough. Produced by Alastair Fothergill, its eleven episodes were among the first television programmes shot in high definition, and the series set a new standard for how wildlife films look and sound. In the US, the Discovery Channel version used Sigourney Weaver as narrator instead.
Attenborough’s delivery is instantly recognisable: soft, slow, curious and full of quiet wonder. Pair that voice with sweeping music and patient, long-lens camera work and almost anything starts to look like a profound moment in the struggle for survival. Comedians have been borrowing the formula for years, applying it to office workers, pets, toddlers and, here, people out on the town.
The humour comes from the gap between what is shown and how seriously it is described. Human courtship really is full of signalling, hesitation and group behaviour, so the narration lands close enough to the truth to feel uncomfortably familiar. At the same time, the sketch is comedy, not a study of attraction, and the narrator is an impersonation, not a real Attenborough voiceover.
Who is Viva La Dirt League?
Viva La Dirt League, often shortened to VLDL, is a New Zealand comedy troupe best known for sketches about video games. Its founders and owners are Rowan Bettjeman, Alan Morrison and Adam King, who are also the main performers. The channel has been active since 2011, and the group turned it into a full-time job in 2017.
Their breakthrough came from PUBG Logic, a series that pokes fun at the bugs, quirks and exploits of the battle royale game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. The game’s makers endorsed the sketches, and the team has promoted them at events such as Armageddon Expo. Morrison once summed up their timing with a short line: “We jumped on the PUBG bandwagon early on.”
Their other long-running hit is Epic NPC Man, set in a made-up fantasy online game called Skycraft. Morrison plays Greg, a garlic farmer and quest-giver in the village of Honeywood, who has to put up with the strange, repetitive behaviour of the players who visit him. The series gently mocks games such as The Elder Scrolls and World of Warcraft and has built a large, loyal audience of its own.
From a small channel to millions of subscribers
When this nightclub sketch first spread, VLDL was reported to have around half a million YouTube subscribers. The group has grown enormously since. It is represented by the Creative Artists Agency, and in 2020 fans backed a Kickstarter campaign that raised about NZ$660,000 for Baelin’s Route, a feature-length Epic NPC Man film that premiered on YouTube on 9 May 2021 and drew more than 900,000 views in its first day.
In March 2022 another Kickstarter raised more than US$2.5 million to build the troupe its own filming studio and offices, which have been in use since June 2023. The main channel has since passed seven million subscribers, with billions of total views, and a separate channel carries the group’s Dungeons & Dragons games.
Why sketches like this still work
Many viral videos rely on shock or spectacle. This one relies on recognition. Almost everyone has been the nervous one by the bar, or has watched a friend lose their nerve, and the documentary framing lets viewers laugh at that small humiliation without anyone being mocked for real. It is a good example of what VLDL does best: taking a familiar format, whether a video game or a nature film, and finding the ridiculous detail everyone has noticed but nobody has said out loud.
If you enjoy their work, the group posts new sketches on its YouTube channel and Facebook page, and fans can support it through Patreon.
Sources: Laughing Squid, 24 May 2018; Wikipedia: Viva La Dirt League; Wikipedia: Planet Earth (2006 TV series); Lostandfoundtobe. Video: Viva La Dirt League.
COMMENTS