Massive Dad

With an audio-visual blitz of an intro, Massive Dad deliver a succession of sketches that herald an ambitious, confident debut. With the conceit that they're on a world tour from their non-specified Eastern European homeland, assembled as a proto-sketch unit from disparate comic traditions in a Hunger Games-style tournament, Stevie Martin, Tessa Coates and Liz Smith are deft performers and creative writers with an appealing aptitude for offbeat humour.

A buzzword-heavy business meeting that escalates nonsensically makes for an assured start. But the trio properly establish their credentials with a breakfast television debate between a sexpert and sex denier, a very funny discussion channelling the tone and vernacular of Richard Dawkins versus religious fundamentalism. Musical parody is a strong suit, with a London market pastiche of Les Miserables' 'Lovely Ladies' an exuberant knees-up, if slightly one-joke. But their most satisfying skit is also the simplest – a folk ballad delivered with bright, harmonising conviction despite the terrible circumstances of the singers' situation.

A scene in which lunching ladies struggle to split a bill is nicely observed but ultimately falls flat. And it's questionable how much the cod-Slavic accents and Hunger Games framing actually add to the hour, beyond the amusing montage of callbacks serving as a coda. Only with their penultimate set-piece, in which they assume the guise of a painfully earnest, American theatre company presenting conflicting messages about climate change, smoking and cyber-bullying to kids, do Massive Dad fully synthesise all that makes them distinct. Still, there's significant promise here.