COMEDIAN and writer Brendan Murphy doesn’t try to hide his inner nerd. In fact, he’s made a career out of it.
Brendan is currently touring his one-man show Buffy Revamped which is an affectionate parody of the hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the 1990s starring Sarah Michelle Gellar a girl with secret power to protect the world from vampires.
It ran for seven series and 144 episodes and Brendan tries to cover the entire Buffy story in his 70 minute show. He first toured the show earlier this year and due to demand has embarked on a second series of dates including two shows at The Lowry, Salford Quays on Sunday.
“I was aware was a fandom but you can never really know how excited people will be about it or what the crossover will be with people interested in going to the theatre,” said Brendan, who previously wrote and starred in Friend - a parody of the sitcom Friends.
“I think Buffy fans have largely been uncatered for for a while - the last episode was 20 years ago, so they’re ready for something else.
“With Buffy in particular, it was something that was not just a popular TV show; it was something really important to the fans and connects on so many different levels.
“When you’re doing something like Buffy Revamped about a show that’s important to people you have to be aware that fans will be apprehensive. They don’t want some comedian coming along and just laughing at the show. Thankfully people have given it a try and realised I am as massive fan as they are. I’m as big a Buffy nerd as anyone who’d want to buy a ticket, I wrote a show about it after all. Hopefully fans can see that it comes from a position of love.”
Having written an award-winning show about Friends and also performed in a Harry Potter parody show, when the pandemic struck it was natural that Brendan should turn to one of his favourite shows to help him through lockdown.
“Like a lot of people I was struggling having so much free time as the entertainment world effectively shut down,” he said. “I decided to combine a comfort watch with a job that I was really going to enjoy.
“I was a massive fan of Buffy. I was about 10 when the first series was shown and although I was probably a bit younger than the intended demographic, it just connected with me.”
It is having that connection which Brendan believes makes a successful parody.
“If a show has a fanbase you have to do it for the right reasons and with care,” he said. “You have to love it as much as the people you are trying to sell it to otherwise they will smell you out in the first five minutes. It all has to come from a place of love.”
Buffy fans have clearly adopted Brendan as one of their own, a number of them even turning up to the shows in costume.
“It can get a bit like a convention some nights which is amazing,” he said. “But although 90 per cent of the audience are probably fans I was very conscious to make every joke work even if you don’t know anything about the TV series.”
So what’s next on Brendan’s parody list?
“I have a few ideas I’m working on but I do have one but I just think it’s too niche,” he said. “It’s a computer game series called Monkey Island which was inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Told you it was niche!”
Buffy Revamped. The Lowry, Salford Quays, Sunday, June 11. Details from www.thelowry.com
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