TV review by Steve Bennett

Crude, laddish and trashy, Keith Lemon’s Celebrity Juice is TV’s answer to the Daily Star, with the added shame of popularising the phrase ‘smash her back doors in’. So after that unedifying ITV2 staple – and his execrable reboot of Through The Keyhole – expectations aren’t high for the moustachioed, perma-tanned lech’s next move.

Yet there are moments of The Keith Lemon Sketch Show that are wonderfully ridiculous, Blending the over-the-top surrealism of TV Burp or Vic & Bob with Lemon’s tabloid sensibilities and over-the-top grotesques can produce winningly silly scenes.

The starting point for the sketches isn’t always inspired – a cooking show rustling up a pasty, or old tat being hawked at an Antiques Roadshow-style event, for example. But done with exaggeration and vigour it works well, especially in the way the Hairy Bikers and David Dickinson are made into stupid, overblown cartoons.

Craig David always said Francis ruined his life with the relentless mockery of him on Bo Selecta! – and there are several candidates for the same fate this time around. Could it be Pharrell Williams in his oversized Diddyman hat? Or Ed Sheeran hiding in his burrow? Maybe even Mark Wright and Michelle Keegan. I can’t say I really know who they are, but this quickie sketch gave a funny impression of vacuity.

And in the sketch that’s already gone viral, Francis/Lemon offered a great take on the Kardashians as caravan-dwelling, bare-knuckle fighting travellers whose exclusive fashion boutique was a roadside trestle table – one of the best ideas in the half-hour.

Much of The Keith Lemon Sketch Show, possibly more than most comedy, might be down to personal taste. To me, his re-creation, with Paddy McGuinness, of the most famous scene in When Harry Met Sally seemed gratuitous, as he smeared himself in mayonnaise and screamed ecstatically ‘smeg my minge!’ But the dedication to going all-in on the idea will surely reduce others to hysterics.

Not everything was so successful on even that level. Did we really need to see a man dressed as a fox squeezing out a turd? And splicing Francis as Adele into real footage from the Piers Morgan show was a flat mash-up, short on jokes. The pensioner Jedward was a good idea, but too fleetingly seen – an unusual complaint for this show, as a little Lemon normally goes a long way.

Plenty of real celebs showed they were game too. Eamonn Holmes in a typically ridiculous Ant & Dec spoof, the great Carrie Fisher stealing scenes in yet another comedy to boost her already galactic levels of coolness, and the usually unflappable Phillip Schofield portraying a side of him we don’t always see. Did he know that he would be parodied later in the show as a short, shouty simpleton sat on the sofa alongside Holly Willoughby – portrayed by Francis exposing 1980s-style comedy false boobs?

That’s probably a good summary of the show: hilarious caricatures, sometimes cheapened with smuttiness. But when these over-the-top impersonations are allowed to shine, this turns out to be much funnier show than you might expect.

Review date: 6 Feb 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett