Sheeps: A Sketch Show

Sheeps: A Sketch Show should probably be on TV. Slick and breathlessly paced, it plays like a pilot episode of a more consistent version of Mitchell and Webb. As the three Cambridge-fresh comics open their show with an amuse bouche of sketch fragments (“Like the extras on a DVD, only you have to watch them because they’re at the start”) it's evident they have, quite reasonably, got their eyes on the small screen. 

The greater herd of their sketches are riffs on television: incoherent foreign sportsmen endorsing incongruous products; arbitrarily epic quiz-show lighting schemes; football managers with cliché Tourette's. The trio clearly adore the box, right down to those absurdly long pauses in live news two-ways, here pushed to their ludicrous logical limits.

The hitch is that their tightly constructed sketches are so packed with witty asides that they’ve hardly left room for a live audience. A deft observation of that awkward “Is this my drink or yours?” moment descends instantly into an impressively choreographed brawl, then abruptly moves on. While it’s a joy to peek at their inside jokes—like how gangly Alastair Roberts conspicuously hogs all the character roles—there’s a sense the audience isn’t quite involved.

Only their wonderful closer, “A look back over those special moments from the show”, plays like genuinely live sketch comedy. As the three shuffle clumsily between tableau positions from their previous sketches over swelling strings, it becomes clear Sheeps may be gunning for television – but at least they’re self-aware about it.