Oliver Bird

Oliver Bird turns up somewhere no one expects to find a person: adrift in a strange, timeless plane, seemingly unbothered by how he got there or how long he's stayed. He's playful, philosophical, and a little too delighted by his own strangeness, dispensing riddles and stories like a man who has had nothing but time to compose them.

Jemaine Clement plays him with a deadpan whimsy that keeps the show's trippiest stretches grounded in something warm and funny rather than merely baffling. The writing gives Oliver a dreamy, unbothered logic all his own, and Clement makes his strangeness feel like character rather than gimmick — a man delighted by his own impossible situation.