Noel Fielding’s AppleTV+ Series Is Dead Because He Gave It the ‘Chappelle’s Show’ Treatment

As Dave Chappelle would put it, technically, Noel Fielding never quit his AppleTV+ period comedy The Completely Made-Up Adventures Of Dick Turpin — he’s just several weeks late for work.

The surrealist comic Fielding has made a career out of being hard-to-pin-down creatively, but, as the hundreds of cast and crew members from Dick Turpin found out recently, the Mighty Boosh and The Great British Baking Show star’s schedule is as inscrutable as his characters. As the title suggests, Dick Turpin told the hyperbolically fictionalized story of the real Victorian-era highwayman by the same name, with Fielding and his talent for over-the-top eccentricities playing the romantic rogue. 

After a generally well-received first season, AppleTV+ and Big Talk studios began shooting Season Two late last year, completing an estimated three-quarters of the planned filming before taking a break for the Christmas holiday. However, once the Dick Turpin team returned to set following the festivities, they reportedly found that Fielding had flown off into the night like Santa Claus himself.

AppleTV+ should send someone to see if there are any albino vampires in Willy Wonka’s clothes skipping around Africa.

While Chappelle’s reasoning for famously no-showing to the shooting of Season Three on Chappelle’s Show is the stuff of TV legend, the circumstances behind Fielding’s unexcused absence are significantly more mysterious. In an investigative piece titled “Why Apple TV+’s Noel Fielding Comedy ‘The Completely Made-Up Adventures Of Dick Turpin’ Came to An Untimely Halt,” Deadline's Jake Kanter spoke to three separate sources from the Dick Turpin team who are still confused as to how they found themselves suddenly out of work following the Christmas break.

According to Deadline, despite the fact that the show finished shooting roughly 75 percent of the footage for Season Two, the missing scenes that require Fielding’s participation are so vital that even an abridged, heavily cut makeshift season couldn’t be salvaged from the film. The sources claimed that, during the break, Fielding left the U.K. where Dick Turpin was shooting and failed to return to the country when production was supposed to restart. But Fielding’s team, despite their lack of communication with AppleTV+ and Big Talk, responded to Deadline in order to deny the suggestion that Fielding’s absence caused the sudden shutdown.

“One of the main cast members who has not been well is not recovered enough to complete the filming,” Fielding’s agent told Deadline, calling the abrupt cancellation that left hundreds of actors, producers and crew members in the lurch and unemployed “hugely disappointing.”

Kanter hilariously added of the official comment, “People close to Dick Turpin said the ‘main cast member’ was Fielding.”

It remains to be seen whether the mysterious illness that prevented Fielding from returning to set or even calling in sick will similarly stop Fielding from resuming his duties as a co-host on The Great British Bake Off, but I’m sure the comic will shoot a fantastic comeback special in 10 years before declaring war on the transgender community.