The Three Englishmen: Optimists

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Favourable first impressions are clearly important to this confusingly named quartet. Having personally settled their customers into their seats like hirsute stewardesses they then kick the show off with a clutch of its strongest sketches. The opening pastiche in which a group of old English folk singers warble about some unlikely consumer items is hugely promising, as is a hilariously homemade Transformers spoof and an elaborate one-liner about musical horses. It’s a very smooth take-off.

Sadly they don’t quite manage to maintain that early standard, and the moments of genius give way to more pedestrian fare. It can be difficult to keep sketch comedy interesting over a full hour—so many tiny intervals where the mind can wander—and their efforts to keep the tempo up backfire slightly. Some fine indie rock fills in as they disappear backstage between sketches, but the taste in tunes is a little too good and you find yourself wanting to hear, say, the rest of an old Badly Drawn Boy single rather than embark on another setup, punchline, awkward ending.

The Three Englishmen put together their Edinburgh sets by performing an hour of new material back in London every month, from which they pluck the gems. It’s an admirable policy but does also prevent Pythonesque linkage between sketches, or an overall theme which might give everything more of a coherent flow. To really keep everyone happy next year they should pack their best sketches into the first half, then put on a 30-minute indie disco. Even the Pythons never thought of that one.