Adam Buxton

MeeBOX, a comedy sketch show created by Adam Buxton, half of Adam and Joe (the first half), is a bit of a muddle.

It has a lot to do with internet video clips (I think the name MeeBOX is a nod to YouTube). There are all sorts of knowing nods to the modern world, sometimes so knowing I don't really know what they're nodding at, if you know what I'm saying.

Hit and miss, I think you'd call it - obviously, the phrase was invented to describe comedy sketch shows. BBC3 certainly doesn't seem convinced, putting it out at 11.45pm on a Sunday night.

But I do like the spoof of a TV show called 10,000 Things That Are Sooo Crap, in which 'journalists', 'comedians', a token posh bloke and a token Scot sit on sofas, or on the stairs, and talk bollocks about bollocks. They swim, that's about it, says journalist Manthea Shringleton, about fish, at number 1,245 in the list of crap things.

MeeBox was supposed to be some sort of YouTube mickey take, a fictional website where all kinds of things happened.

The first sketch was all about an actor (or pretender as he called himself) called Famous Guy, who had starred in films like The Exploding Car. There were clips from the film to demonstrate how awful his cockney accent was. I was chuckling. Good sign.

Then it sort of dipped a little bit. There was an unchuckly sketch called 10,000 Things That Are Sooo Crap (fish and buildings were on the menu last night), and Ken Korda (a vacant and smiley independent film interviewer) was ok.

MeeBOX then upped the chuckle stakes with a very funny version of Songs Of Praise, where Adam just scrolled across new words to the hymn (there's a naked czar in my mouth), and a very neat pastiche of a nerd and his new film making software.

Like most sketch shows, there was a hit and miss element to all this, but half of the content was funny. Not a bad ratio.

MeeBOX was a pilot, let's not forget. I think Adam Buxton is funny and clever and at his best when he's mucking about with video and music and stuff. I hope he gets a full series because, on this evidence, he just about deserves it. And it'd be nice to see Adam on telly more often.

Adam Buxton takes a break from working with his comedy partner Joe Cornish with this 'DIY sketch show' pilot. It's a bit like YouTube or MySpace, except it's all stuff I've made myself, says Buxton.

Especially funny is the software tutorial about movie-making, a re-subtitling of Songs of Praise and a sketch about why fish are rubbish. Some of Buxton's best-known characters, Ken Korda and Famous Guy, do video blogs, and the title music is by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood (Buxton co-directed the video for the band's single Jigsaw Falling into Place).

MeeBOX news from Adam Buxton

A blog post from MeeBOX creator Adam Buxton, posted in 2007, in which the writer talks about the development of the pilot.

There'll come a point when Adam and Joe get too old for all this, and it'll be a sad day when that happens, though at the moment they still look as young as they did when they first appeared. Their bedsit's safe for a while, and there's always a career as a full-time professional talking head on a Saturday evening TV nostalgia package once they turn 35.

As usual, Adam and Joe was a patchwork constructed from high-density televisual offal, each viciously pastiching one or another of the medium's sacred cows.

Where Adam and Joe make their mark, the achievement which will secure them a place on the mantelpiece of history, is that, with the aid of few bits of plastic and sticky-backed tape left over from Blue Peter, they reminded us that we do not live in a world comprised solely of million dollar special effects. They also reminded us, by means of a song which could quite feasibly become a chart success, that there is a possibility that actors in real life have the propensity to be boring.