Birthday Girls interview

This year, Fringe favourites Birthday Girls return to Edinburgh with their third show, Sh!t Hot Party Legends.

Josh Widdicombe is the latest TV personality to develop a sitcom that mines a less well-adjusted version of themselves for comic effect. Josh features Widdicombe as a cheerfully inept stand-up, living with uni pals and undergoing all the trials of twentysomething urban life. It's anything but groundbreaking but is amiable enough and features decent turns from Jack Dee and Beattie Edmondson as his landlord and flatmate respectively.

This debuting comedy, Josh has both been written by and stars ;p]Josh Widdicombe] who seems to be portraying a heightened version of himself. The fictional Josh is a loser in love and lives with two of his former university cohorts Owen (Ellis James) and Kate (Beattie Edmondson). I personally didn't buy the friendship between the trio which was one of a number of problems with the show. The lead story of Josh being afraid to swim was rather clichéd as was the subplot in which Owen tried to teach Kate to be a better kisser. There was nothing that felt particularly true to life about these scenarios and instead they felt like they simply existed in the sitcom world. Jack Dee had seemingly be flown in to play landlord Geoff for the simple reason that people know who he is. However the interactions between Dee and Widdicombe fell flat and just made me remember how much better Dee's Lead Balloon was than this sitcom. Every punchline was predictable and every situation was rather weak especially the final moments involving a rather bizarre conversation about dip. The only thing that Josh really has going for it is the likeable Widdicombe who is a rather endearing central figure however he's hampered by he and Tom Crane's script. After serving us up the rather wonderful Together, BBC Three don't appear to have another hit on their hands with Josh a sitcom that didn't even raise a titter from me in its thirty minute running time. As we've seen on The Last Leg, Widdicombe is much better than this and the sooner this incredibly lame sitcom is put out of its misery the better.

Arriving as a series after a successful Comedy Feeds pilot, this amiable comedy follows the misfortunes of grumpy and frustrated Josh (Josh Widdicombe) who sees no way out of his life with his flatmates, the relentlessly cheerful Owen (Elis James) and childhood friend Kate (Beattie Edmondson). A pool party invitation horrifies Josh as he can't swim ("swimming is not about fun, it's about survival"), while Kate learns that she has a reputation as a bad kisser.

Josh review: Beattie Edmondson's comic timing stuck out

There's nothing original or remarkable about the set-up - or much of the script - in Josh Widdicombe's eponymous sitcom but there's promising chemistry between its stars.

Happy birthday to you... for in fifty years time

You may well have come across Beattie Edmondson, Rose Johnson and Camille Ucan before as one half of sketch comedy group Lady Garden. But now they are back with a brand new name - Birthday Girls - and brand a new show - 2053 - which is only set in the bloomin future. We caught up with all three Birthday Girls to find out more.

Birthday Girls head to dysopian comedy future of 2053

Edinburgh Fringe newcomers Birthday Girls are a comedy sketch trio made up of Beattie Edmondson, Rose Johnson and Camille Ucan, former members of sketch group Lady Garden (who appeared on BBC3's Live at the Electric).

I wonder if Ben Elton saw a Channel 4 Comedy Showcase pilot called Fun Police a couple of years ago about an ­overzealous health and safety department at a local council. I only ask because his new sitcom stars David Haig as overzealous health and safety officer Gerald Wright.

Gerald's gripes about modern life sound suspiciously like one of Ben Elton's old stand-up routines, only done in a comedy voice.

And almost everyone in this has a comedy voice, except for Beattie Edmondson, who has two. She plays Gerald's daughter's lesbian girlfriend - a modern flourish in a show as old-fashioned as one of Elton's spangly suits.

You can feel the heavy hand of ex-My Family director Dewi Humphreys all over this, while the laughter track suggests an ­audience rupturing their spleens over gags that are smirk-worthy at best. But Mina Anwar who plays Malika is rather good - perhaps because she's the only one speaking normally.

Once the enfant terrible of British comedy, Ben Elton has diverted his considerable energy in recent years to writing brash satirical fiction and money-spinning musicals. He hasn't touched television in any major way since 2005 with his short-lived sitcom Blessed, an ill-advised riff on parenting. Now he's back, braving the genre with this six-part series based around the goings on at fictional Baselricky Council Health & Safety Department. It's a hit-and-miss affair. On the one hand, you get to spend time with the superlative David Haig who stars as pernickety department head Gerald Wright, six months post-break-up from his wife and living with daughter Susan (Joanne Matthews) and her ditzy partner Victoria (Beattie Edmondson).

High-octane Haig rules the screen with an admirably dextrous performance reminiscent of Elton himself in its attack and precision. The council setting also has potential, giving Elton the chance to challenge the bureaucracy of small-minded local government - tonight's episode tackles red tape around a rogue speed bump. But despite old-fashioned sitcom aspirations, it's tame stuff compared to Elton's politically charged persona of old, and the laughs are too few.

It is with relief that I can report that Ben Elton's new comeback series is hilarious! It is a classic situation comedy with great jokes and ... and funny characters who ... who ...

No. I'm sorry, it's no good. You see, it really is no good; in fact, it's a stinker. David Haig plays Gerald Wright (hence the title!), an annoying man who wants everything done a certain way. It's a perennial sitcom trope, done beautifully by Richard Briers in Ever Decreasing Circles, for instance, or 
decently by Chris Barrie in The Brittas Empire. He's a health and safety inspector for a local council, the department "that introduced the static seesaw and the horizontal slide [and said] babies must wear helmets when breastfeeding near the swings".

But what makes it a stinker are the jokes, which feel as though when the BBC moved out of Television Centre they found an old box at the back of the cupboard labelled "Leftover Sitcom Gags 1973". They are ancient, is what I'm saying, they have whiskers on them.

The main running joke involves Wright trying to wash his hands under a bathroom tap and soaking his trousers, and then someone coming in and thinking he's wet himself, and then shoogling about under a hand dryer and someone else coming in and thinking he's doing something filthy. And this happens three times.

Haig tries to make things sound funny by stretching and emphasising certain words - not a stammer, but a sort of word-mastication which would be excellent for someone trying to practice shorthand or audio typing dictation, if anyone still does that nowadays.

The show's token nod to modernity is that Wright lives with his daughter and her female partner (played by Beattie Edmondson, daughter of Elton's old chum Adrian - how cosy). He has to buy a present and they suggest a shop called Girl Shack - wait, Girl Shack? In 2013? I take it Chic Chicks or Trendy Togs or Burdz Boutique were all taken?

Finally, there is the catchphrase: "Don't get me started!" which Wright says when particularly exasperated. This is very nearly "Are you 'avin' a laugh?" from Ricky Gervais' spoof sitcom When The Whistle Blows. Sorry, Ben: this isn't 
the one that's going to win over your critics.