by Steve Bennett

If you were taking bets on the next comedian to get their own name-in-the-title TV series, you’d have offered long odds on it being that guy from Phoneshop.

Yet the BBC, defying a perceived wisdom that the sketch show is dead in this age of internet virals, has signed Javone Prince, who makes for a charismatic ringmaster for the linking sequences, filmed in front of a well-hyped studio audience. Perhaps a little too well-hyped, for the laughter track they generate sometimes feels intrusive in the filmed sketches.

In some ways the show falls between two stools. This is unmistakably a black show, yet there also seems to be a lot of caution not to stray too far from the mainstream. So while most sketches have a racial element, it’s done with set-ups that are not just easily identifiable, they’re almost cliched.

So if you watch this, you’d better like the idea of posh white people speaking in an urban patios, a premise that seemingly never get old. And on the flip side black street kids speak like posh white people in a recurring sketch that relocates Made In Chelsea as Made In Peckham.

Comedically it seems old hat,right from the opening scene has historical characters acting in a very modern way – another tried-and-tested comic formula. But the execution is deft.

Of course the stereotypes are based in truth… the running gag about how black people and white people have interacted since 1948 rings true for a reason. And after a sketch in which black guys are mistaken for drug dealers, a straw poll of the audience in Brockley’s Rivoli Ballroom,where the live segments are taped, reveals its a near-universal experience. Pointing out that it’s not OK seems worthwhile, though it could be done with more ingenuity or edge – but this is not the sort of show that’s out to cause too many waves.

It’s a shiny-floor family offering, more or less, as evidenced by the musical elements. Mica Paris brought the soul to this series opener, while Prince also has his very own band, led by an amusingly narked Omar, as well as an RP announcer doing the patois thing.

The entertainment is slick, the tone enjoyable, yet behind the superficial confidence it feels like a show yet to really find its mojo.

Published: 19 Jul 2015