McNeil and Pamphilon

For the past couple of years, Steve McNeil and Sam Pamphilon have enjoyed consistent praise for their easy chemistry and reliably punchy double act. It seems they've taken it to heart.

Not content with being one of the better sketch duos out there, this time they've wrapped up their skits in an ingenious body-swap narrative that allows them to have great fun with the roles of straight man and fool. To begin with, they rattle through a wry back-and-forth about putting on an Edinburgh show. It's chatty and semi-sincere, full of gallows humour about the kamikaze cycle of 11 months of day jobs and one of self-indulgent risk. 

Then, smuggled in like just another sketch, comes "the machine" (read: two colander helmets and a bit of tinsel). At first sight it's no more than a reasonably clever gimmick, as the old switcheroo sees Pamphilon go from vain moron to neurotic smartarse, his co-star vice-versa. But in time we see just how thoroughly this idea has been spun out and sustained: every possibility is squeezed from it, and often to thrilling effect. 

It takes some patient groundwork to establish the two characters before they can be flipped around, and the build-up is only rarely heavy-handed. McNeil is the miserable, patronising naysayer, while Pamphilon is the bimbo best friend who undermines him in return. As well as the obligatory homoerotic undertones, there's plenty of jealousy and mutual contempt. The games they play with this recipe demand no small amount of acting skill and both men rise to the challenge, bouncing off one another with tongue-twisting nimbleness.

Amid all this trickery, a handful of standalone sketches plays second fiddle to the plot, but a couple of them shine: the over-the-top agony of the talking clock voice actor; the botched suicide that descends into a farce.

It's usually a given that sketch should be lumbered with a sense of artifice, simply because each little episode is too short to be much more than a flimsy means to a punchline or two. Here McNeil and Pamphilon find a way to strain against this restriction with admirable flair. Let's not get carried away, though – a big idea is nothing without some big laughs. And as a double act with charm and verve, these two achieve the best of both.