Review by Steve Bennett

Comic characters, multimedia, near-nudity. All this can't disguise that this show is woefully short on actual ideas.

The nudity comes from Mounfield himself - an actor who appeared in an Iceland advert, merrily cycling around while pouring flour into his shirt to celebrate the joy of a good frozen food offer.

And it's only his thespian ability that goes anyway to saving the show from its own material - as his delivery can make any old nonsense sound at least vaguely interesting, and often has to.

Opening in the lazy caricature of a stuffy old Tory, the first topic under the catch-all banner of lying is politics. But the fact that politicians are liars is nothing new, and this adds nothing to the topic, avoiding anything that might come close to genuine satire.

Other subjects such as advertising and pornography are equally held up to the most superficial of examinations, throwing no new light on the topics and finding few laughs.
It's as if he knows what ought to be funny, without actually understanding the concept of humour.

A segment where Mounfield describes some of his previous employment is the oddest of the lot, with no real attempt to say anything. Talking about the regional characteristics he found while doing market research, he says, for example, that people in Gloucester are racist. Don't know why, or what comic value is in it, but he does. And surely making offensive generalisations based on where someone is from isn't exactly a million miles from racism itself, is it?

If nothing else, this proves that actors perform better in character than as themselves - which in itself could say something about deceit, although don't expect any such analysis in a superficial show which is. at best, midly amusing in places.

Review date: 1 Jan 2012
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett