Review by Steve Bennett

Take the Goodies, subtract wit, verve, music, elaborate visual effects, well-timed slapstick and daft jokes… and this is the barely competent trio you’ll probably be left with.

They all seem amiable enough chaps, but this fatally underwritten mess of clunky, ill-considered amateurish tedium just doesn’t work on any level.

Brooding, sinister comedy may be a popular genre, but Dan McKee, Ben Smith and Laurence Tuck make little attempt to set the mood. They’re not enough actors to lay on the morbid melodrama, so they just don’t bother. But equally they don’t make a virtue of the cheap budget and try to subvert the conventions. Basically, they have no idea what they are trying to achieve – but it’s safe to say they fail to achieve it.

The few jokes they have are crushingly predictable. They have scroll which they tell us has a necromancy spell on one side and a soup recipe on the other (no, it makes no sense, but if that’s going to be your criterion, you’re going to be really lost here). Guess which side they read when it comes to the dramatic moment…

One character is called Bakewell, so when they get frustrated with him, they can sigh: ‘Bakewell, you tart.’ That, honestly, is the best gag in the entire show.

They’ve nicked the idea of overselling the gift shop from Radio 4’s Museum Of Everything, but do it with much less élan, then drive the unfunny idea into the ground by endless repetition.

The idea of the show is that these three strangers are trapped in the mysterious museum, so recount the stories of how they came to find themselves there; thus allowing them to trudge through several lamely supernatural Tales Of The Tediously Expected.

At one point, the museum is described as ‘the embodiment of hell’, which really is too tempting a line for reviewers not to pounce on. Really, there would be more laughs in a Holocaust museum.

Review date: 16 Aug 2009
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett