Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson in Fast Show Photo: Tyson Benton/BBC
Fast Show returns at 30 The 1st Anniversary Concert Tour sent quite a few people into Ron Manager mode, chatting about the golden era of sketch comedy that Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Caroline Ahern and the crew helped define. They jump towards the goal posts, quote a lot of dialogue, shout «Scorchio!» when you went home to have tea. Is not it? Mmm. Wonderful.
And if you only watch TV, it's easy to see how you could come to that conclusion, and there's no danger of The Fast Show itself returning to the BBC. «People always tell us, 'Are you going to do another Fast Show?' Higson told The Sun. “I don’t think we’ll do any more TV stuff, we can’t do anything better than what we already have. We're all pretty old. If you try to do something new, people will just say, «Oh, this new one isn't as good as the old one.» And if you just play old characters, they'll ask, «Can't they just do something new?»
Between the start of The Mary Whitehouse Experience in 1990 and the end of The Limmy Show in 2013, there was a continuous series of sketch shows running on mainstream TV channels, spanning the alternative and mainstream worlds of comedy. «The Fast Show,» «The Real McCoy,» «Whack the Pony,» «Good God,» «Vic and Bob's Various Beginnings,» «The Day Today»—a sketch show run in secret—and «Big Train» broke new ground in nineties. Then, by the time the 2000s rolled around, Little Britain had become so huge that people were willing to buy a PlayStation 2 game based on it. >
Sketch shows absorb a huge amount of material and ideas, so they were a good place for aspiring writers and performers. At the turn of the millennium, Bruiser, for example, provided a springboard for David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Martin Freeman and Olivia Colman, with additional writing help from pre-The Office Richard Ayoade and Ricky Gervais, among others.
For a while, it seemed like literally anyone could put on a sketch show. Anyone who has seen the Matt Horn and James Corden film after Gavin & Stacey boosted Horne & Corden can attest to how wrong this is. They're expensive—Harry Enfield once estimated that sketch shows cost three times as much as a panel show, including costume changes, comedy beard changes, set changes, and so on—and by the early 2010s, panel shows made a lot more sense. : one set, a lot less preparation and no comedy beards.
Sketch comedy has been declared dead several times and is now scarce on British television. ITV's somewhat awkward hybrid The Stand-Up Sketch Show tried to freshen things up, with mixed results. Kiell Smith-Byno's Red Flag sketch pilot last year was great and filled with stars like Jamie and Natasia Demetriou, but it never made it to series. Famalam has been in hibernation since 2020. Demetriou's Brilliant Ellie, Natasha and Celeste Dring and Ellie White and Freya Parker's Lazy Susan gave the impression that a revival was just around the corner. However, since then things have gone downhill.
But sketch comedy isn't dead; It's just not where he used to live. His natural home is social media. In the noughties, comedians turned to YouTube as a way to get ideas out early before they became stale, and as a low-pressure environment to try out material that might have been filtered out in production meetings.
For example, Peter Serafinowicz's 50 Impressions in Two Minutes was right at that internet sweet spot where it was stupid and throwaway, but absolutely worth watching. Now the best of Instagram and TikTok sketch comics are on display for TV roles: Lucia Cheskin, aka Chi with a C, and Ed Jones of sketch team Crybabies appeared in Channel 4's Big Boys, while Harry Trevaldwyn landed a UK remake Call my agent.
The sketch is now the basic unit of comedy on the internet, and the fact that you don't need to know the comedian's identity or catalog (or really anything beyond a few words in the caption that define the scene) means Action you've never heard of before heard can leave a mark on your Insta feed or For You page with ease in a way that a two-minute stand-up clip can't. This also applies to television sketches. It's a rare day on the Internet when Tim Robinson's hot dog guy from the incomparable I Think You Should Leave — the one who insists we're all trying to find the guy who did it — doesn't show up.
And exactly what made the sketch less compelling on television is one of its strengths on the Internet. Cheap, deliberately crap props and costumes are funny. One of Munya Chawawa's first big hits was an image of Nigella Lawson, where a T-shirt pulled back over her head created a decent imitation of her hair. Kae Curd made a very passable nasal cannula out of old iPhone headphones for a sketch in which he is recovering from a holiday in the hospital. Ed Jones does the impression of a lounge singer, using what looks like a TV remote as a microphone.
This lo-fi look — the feeling that you've just stumbled upon a random member of the public who had a funny idea and decided to go with it — has helped bring sketch comedy to a whole new audience that wants a little comedy. who look and sound just like them.
Five young sketch comedians to watch
1. Durk and Ski
Two workmates who started making funny videos to laugh in their free time gained so many fans that they even performed several live performances. Their best stuff riffs on the ordinary as it gets weirder, and their long-running Coronation Street parody, which even had its own Christmas special, is both very funny and genuinely gripping.
2. Freya Mallard
Mallard performs most of his time as a stand-up comedian, but is a good example of a comedian who has managed to gain attention by combining live work with deeply entertaining skits on Instagram and TikTok. Check out the episode with her mom who can't remember the melody of a single song, or her collaboration with comedian Abi Clarke breaking down how Gen Z writes for TV.
3. Kae Curd
Curd is also primarily a stand-up and podcast host, but his ability to impress is absolutely impeccable and is best demonstrated in his short skits — especially when he takes on the various radio host beats.
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4. Zara Gladman
Perhaps best known for her vain, snobbish character as a Glasgow-born West End mum who always swimming wildly and caressing her. arrogant question about VAT rates on school fees. Gladman also describes extremely accurately what it would be like to have a Scottish news reporter as a flatmate.
5. Davina Bentley
Bentley is absolutely merciless when poking fun at the sly and hypocritical ways Hollywood men apologize and too-cool-for-school podcast stories, bros, but the piece de resistance is Gary Lineker's big spinning wheel of podcast ideas. Extra points for a marker beard.
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