Cowards

This sketch show didn't attract much attention on its first run earlier this year, but is worth revisiting. Yes, it's frightfully Footlights-y and the quiet, deadpan delivery isn't new, but Tim Key, Stefan Golaszewski, Lloyd Woolf and Tom Basden take just enough risks to set themselves apart. There's a running longform sketch where they all live absurdly together in a caravan, while the highlight of each episode tends to be a wilfully random, spectacularly insulting animation about celebrities' private lives. From these mild surprises come laughs.

Does BBC Comedy have some sort of Soviet five year plan to quintuple the production of sketch shows? Is there a sketch show arms race being fought with a rival broadcaster?

Cowards is yet another one, but I have to say that it is funny and original enough to stand out from an ever increasing crowd. The humour is a mix of the deadpan and the surreal, performed with subtlety and skill. Having said that, episode one was stolen by a long haired terrier who - assisted by subtitles - was trying to explain through barking that he was actually a man under a witch's curse.

Blog Review

Cowards is a new sketch show that doesn't completely suck. I mean it's still hit-and-miss, but the great thing about Cowards is that I don't mind watching the misses because they're still being performed by hugely watchable comedians.

In this new sketch series from comedy quartet Cowards, performance is stronger than punchline. This is no bad thing: the deadpan-absurdist approach works well, especially with the rooftop judiciary and worryingly precise job-seeker. But the schoolboy schlock (a Russian roulette soiree) doesn't.

Individually, Tom Basden, Stefan Golaszewski, Tim Key and Lloyd Woolf have caused quite a stir on the live comedy circuit, and their shared love of deadpan, absurd and irreverent humour shines out in this inventive, enjoyable and subtle sketch show. Particularly pertinent highlights include a middle-class game of Russian roulette where adhering to the rules is paramount, and a job seeker whose only aim is to become Mick Hucknall's PA.

Sketch shows rarely justify the sum of their parts, but there is sometimes an exception. Adapted from the Radio 4 show, the cowards in question are comedians Tim Key, Tom Basden, Stefan Golaszewski and Lloyd Woolf and their act works because the sketches are a blend of the subtle, imaginative and absurd. Scenarios include an excruciatingly dark Russian-roulette dinner-party game.

This gaggle of fraidy-pants have managed to stop their knees knocking in terror to produce this spiky sketch show, featuring a gang of delinquent judges and a dinner party at which boring old Trivial Pursuit is swapped for revolver-based fun.

I'm not afraid to say I love Cowards

It's only got a three-show taster run, but the episodes are brilliant. If BBC4 has got any sense - and the likes of The Thick Of It and Screenwipe suggests so - they'll order a second, full-length series pronto.