Flophouse, part of the initial slate of shows for Vice Media’s new 24-hour cable channel Viceland, presents young, mostly unknown stand-up comedians in their natural habitats—both onstage and off. In each episode, music video veteran Lance Bangs travels to a house or unconventional venue in a different city and captures the lives of the comedians who perform, eat, drink, and pass out there. In this trailer, we see a few familiar faces (wasn’t that Steve Agee with the bow and arrow?), but mostly we find enthusiastic newcomers happily and hedonistically immersing themselves in their local comedy scene. Clearly, this is not Last Comic Standing.
“[Viceland creative heads] Spike Jones and Eddy Moretti asked me to help put together a television network for Vice,” Bangs said in a recent interview with Splitsider. “None of us like or watch reality television. We wanted to make shows where we would find interesting, compelling characters that had a different life experience than what’s normally on TV, sort of enter their world and shoot interesting television shows with them.”
Episodes have already been compiled from dwellings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, New Orleans, and Atlanta. Flophouse premieres March 3 at 10:30 p.m.