No, the show is not about "Nirvana" the band, it's about "Nirvanna the Band", a band consisting of Matt and Jay, two best friends that have had a lifelong dream of performing a show at the Rivoli, a real life, moderately popular Toronto bar; this show actually has nothing to do with Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl's band. If that sounds ridiculous and absurd, that's because it is. In fact, that's not even scratching the surface of the absurdity this series has to offer.
(Almost) every episode consists of Matt and Jay trying to get a show at the Rivoli with some convoluted and insane plan and eventually failing in a spectacular fashion. What makes this show so uniquely funny is that the fictional plights of the characters often involve real people that have no idea they are on a show. To get the footage of Matt and Jay attempting their schemes, the real actors that play these characters go out into public acting like their nonsensical characters and (for the most part) actually do their plans, interacting with many people as their characters that are unaware that they are actually playing their characters. For instance, one episode is about Matt and Jay getting into Sundance Film Festival in order to gain popularity so they can play at the Rivoli. Since the real Matt Johnson is a filmmaker and his film "Operation Avalanche" actually got into Sundance, they decided to center the episode around the character Matt sneaking his awful film into Sundance. To get footage for this episode, Matt and Jay actually introduced the film as their characters from "Nirvanna the Band the Show" without anyone at the premiere having any idea of what was really going on. Matt also did many real live interviews as his character, causing a lot of confusion with a lot of people and a lot of embarrassing situations as well. That is dedication.
Not everything is improvised and authentic -- each episode has a plot, and in order to adhere to that plot there must be scripted and planned moments, but since the show has a general mockumentary style to it, what is fictional and what is really happening often blend together to the point where you can't tell what is planned and what the actors are really doing. Sometimes, it seems as if they will make slight additions to the episode based on sudden interactions they have with real people. But, despite the unpredictability of episodes, nothing in the show happens without purpose. It is the perfect blend of spontaneity and structure; even outside of interactions with other people, much of the dialogue between Matt and Jay seems improvised, yet there are many small details which seem insignificant at first, but they are truly a set up for a much bigger joke later in the episode or even later in the series.
The show is also incredibly self-aware; the opening scene is Matt and Jay talking about how to introduce their show at the Rivoli, while introducing their show to us in the process. There are also frequent pop-culture references, some purposefully blatantly obvious and exaggerated, and some pretty subtle, but never without purpose; every major reference, including the personalized intros to every episode, coincides with the overall structure or style of the episode, often even subverting your expectations based on what they reference at during their intros and throughout the episode. It's one of the funniest and strangest shows currently on television, and it deserves a lot more attention.
(Almost) every episode consists of Matt and Jay trying to get a show at the Rivoli with some convoluted and insane plan and eventually failing in a spectacular fashion. What makes this show so uniquely funny is that the fictional plights of the characters often involve real people that have no idea they are on a show. To get the footage of Matt and Jay attempting their schemes, the real actors that play these characters go out into public acting like their nonsensical characters and (for the most part) actually do their plans, interacting with many people as their characters that are unaware that they are actually playing their characters. For instance, one episode is about Matt and Jay getting into Sundance Film Festival in order to gain popularity so they can play at the Rivoli. Since the real Matt Johnson is a filmmaker and his film "Operation Avalanche" actually got into Sundance, they decided to center the episode around the character Matt sneaking his awful film into Sundance. To get footage for this episode, Matt and Jay actually introduced the film as their characters from "Nirvanna the Band the Show" without anyone at the premiere having any idea of what was really going on. Matt also did many real live interviews as his character, causing a lot of confusion with a lot of people and a lot of embarrassing situations as well. That is dedication.
Not everything is improvised and authentic -- each episode has a plot, and in order to adhere to that plot there must be scripted and planned moments, but since the show has a general mockumentary style to it, what is fictional and what is really happening often blend together to the point where you can't tell what is planned and what the actors are really doing. Sometimes, it seems as if they will make slight additions to the episode based on sudden interactions they have with real people. But, despite the unpredictability of episodes, nothing in the show happens without purpose. It is the perfect blend of spontaneity and structure; even outside of interactions with other people, much of the dialogue between Matt and Jay seems improvised, yet there are many small details which seem insignificant at first, but they are truly a set up for a much bigger joke later in the episode or even later in the series.
The show is also incredibly self-aware; the opening scene is Matt and Jay talking about how to introduce their show at the Rivoli, while introducing their show to us in the process. There are also frequent pop-culture references, some purposefully blatantly obvious and exaggerated, and some pretty subtle, but never without purpose; every major reference, including the personalized intros to every episode, coincides with the overall structure or style of the episode, often even subverting your expectations based on what they reference at during their intros and throughout the episode. It's one of the funniest and strangest shows currently on television, and it deserves a lot more attention.