In the penultimate sketch of the show, one of the four funny-men, Tom Dowling, gives the audience a few tips on how they should best respond to the show. He concludes that it’s safest to say that it was “hit and miss”, so that you can adapt to the responses of your companion. This meta-sketch was not only amusing, but rather accurate. The show was a series of hits and misses, eliciting, by turn, awkward titters and unbridled guffaws.
The show started badly with a rambling voice-over, which was meant to be one side of a phone conversation between the actors and their manager, but which fell a bit flat. After this, though, the sketches went from strength to strength, culminating in the hilariously obscene anthem to Rachel Riley. “Your blue eyes make my penis smile” crooned one of the boys to the countdown queen, while a tributary slideshow of her in her famously microscopic dresses was projected onto a screen behind.
The sketches came in various forms: spoofs of Oxford students, contemporary satire, absurdist humour, and, of course, that crucial splash of meta-comedy. The Oxford-based gags were the weakest. For example, the boys acted out a condensed episode of ‘Shark Tales’. At the start the ‘presenter’ announces that he is “posh, wears glasses and will show you that drunk people are pricks”. The issue is that the presenters of the real show are fully self-aware and that is part of their charm. Making a parody sketch of something that is already a self-parody seems a bit pointless.
Somewhat less obvious jokes came with the spoofs of contemporary TV shows. Josh Dolphin gave a wonderful monologue in the role of Alan Bennett auditioning for a “gritty Northern adaptation of Breaking Bad” and the idea that “Top Gear’s’ tagline is ‘Not racist – just banter!’” is horribly accurate. Oli Johnson Munday’s creepy guitar-playing Spaniard added some nice slapstick to the show in an absurd scene about two young Welshmen on holiday in Spain.
Bizarrely, some of the funniest sketches were those without talking. Perhaps the highlight of the whole show was a brief sketch in which Tom Dowling sits alone at a table with a pint to the backing of Sixpence None the Richer’s cheesy ‘Kiss Me’ and then all of a sudden, violently chunders into his glass. Understated, but hilarious. Similarly comic was the recurring sketch in which Dan Byam Shaw mimes the very emotionally fraught cutting and distributing of a cake.
It may be a little hit and miss at the moment, but with a few tweaks and some work, this could be an hour-long barrel of laughs.
