Don't read any further unless you've got 11-odd (very odd) minutes on your hands. Just bookmark this and come back later. Honest. Trust us on this.
Because if you haven't already watched Too Many Cooks - you need to.
It's the internet's latest favourite video, a below-the-radar comedy smash that goes some _very_ dark and unexpected places.
Watch it below before you read on - the less you know the better (warning: VERY NSFW).
The clip, which snuck up unawares on US audiences, was first broadcast on US cable network Adult Swim - at 4 a.m. last Friday morning, and labelled as an 'Infomercial'.
Beginning as a jaunty parody of the opening titles to classic '80s sitcoms - we're thinking Diff'rent Strokes, we're thinking Family Ties, we're even thinking A.L..F - we first notice that something is up when what's onscreen appears to become trapped in a never-ending loop. How many people are in this thing? When are the credits going to stop? Things takes a turn towards the sinister as a bearded figure in the background starts to become more and more prominent and we wonder, when did he show up? What does he want? Why is he carrying that machete?
And then, things get
weird.Anyone who saw it was understandably affected, and soon social media was on fire with questions:
What was it? Where had it come from? What has it done to my brain? What bastard put something in my drink?
Too Many Cooks is so deftly engineered to unnerve stoned people in their mid 30s, it might actually have been created by the US government.
— Pegg News (@simonpegg) November 7, 2014
The catchy theme tune, not to mentioned the scenes of surrealist horror, had embedded themselves in viewers' brains.
🎵Too many cooks🎵
— Pegg News (@simonpegg) November 9, 2014
Before long,
was talking about it.It soon emerged that the twisted genius behind it was a guy called Casper Kelly, who told Esquire that he was 'shellshocked' by the response.
"It was one of those shower ideas that I know Andy Kaufman or David Letterman would have—to repeat something until it gets annoying and just keep going until it gets funny again," Kelly said.
"The idea was for it to be a sitcom intro that doesn't stop and keeps adding characters."
And the whole, um, serial killer thing?
"My editor Paul Painter and I came up with that," Kelly told Esquire.
"We wanted to create this chirpy sitcom world with a man who would try to fight the cheerfulness at all costs."
Mission accomplished.