Jigsaw

In the average sketch there comes a point—a third or two thirds of the way through—when the game is up, the laughs are done, and the rest is formality – a tidying up of loose ends. In a Jigsaw sketch this point almost never comes. 

A supergroup comprising three established standups, Dan Antopolski, Tom Craine and Nat Luurtsema have made the transition into this new genre with aplomb. The trio piece together such a weird and unpredictable beast that untangling just how their combined brains work is like a Mensa-rated edition of the show's namesake. 

Antopolski, the alpha male of the group, operates as the aggressive salesman of Jigsaw’s absurdity. One sketch finds him playing a Stanslavskian actor giving his all to internet telesales. Craine, the character man of the trio, crushes boundaries. His fey Klansman wears a floral pillowcase to a rally. Luurtsema plays as straight as one can while holding up a thumb wrapped in black tape to superimpose a Hitler moustache onto others' faces. These form just a specimen slide of Jigsaw’s exhaustive laboratory of sketches. 

Attuned to the attention span of the internet generation, folk who groan at any YouTube video that creeps past the 30 second margin, no sketch ofJigsaw lasts longer than a couple of minutes. Broadband-fast changeovers leave inevitable glitches, props malfunction and corpsing recurs, but that only makes them seem human.