Thrice

This was never going to be the cheeriest of affairs. Not a chink of sunshine graced the recent work of the Daykin sisters, nor that of Nathan Dean Williams. So following their collaboration, here is a sketch show better witnessed in morbid fascination than in search of comic relief.

Thrice's pitch-black humour lurks somewhere between cartoon surrealism and everyday misery, a kind of gothic Viz comic populated by 2D grotesques. Stereotypes—of butch lesbians, Eastern European housewives and benefits cheats—are taken to absurd extremes in an hour that casually, repeatedly plunges into depravity. 

The aesthetic seems built around two jarring juxtapositions. The first is a contrast of mundanity and perversion – corned beef and pound shops pepper an otherwise outlandish script, while the chatty voiceovers during blackouts are 'spoken' by illuminated sex dolls. The other is that sketches full of fear, loathing and Pinteresque pauses jolt into jaunty music and the occasional manic dance – a discombobulating shift.

Sarah Daykin brings a twitchy neurosis to the table, sister Lizzie makes for an amusingly sullen victim, and rangy, shock-headed Williams is a natural villain. While the payoff from what they create is usually just a wry satisfaction at how revolting it all is, some moments hint at the intensity of the Daykins' 2011 outing as Toby. Most notably, the love story of two lonely, anorak-swaddled souls, bound by their dislike of almost everything, is weirdly poignant. And the finale, a horrifying extrapolation of saccharine Christmas tune I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, shows some brilliantly twisted imaginations at work.