iPlayer review by Steve Bennett

This Comedy Feed is, unusually, a full-length sitcom pilot. It revolves around three self-centred twentysomethings who work as tutors, reassuring themselves ‘it’s a just a stop-gap, we’ll move on to better things’. That’s a line from the show, just in case you need any further explanation.

In fact, the script often tends to point out explicitly everything the characters are feeling, rather than leaving it to the viewer to figure out. Mostly this happens when the trio meet to discuss their lives in a coffee shop, staffed by Adam Riches as the weirdest barista since Friends’ Gunther.

This is just one aspect where Limbo feels overly sitcommy with characters that are often broad and stereotypical, and situations that stretch credibility.

Take Francis, played by Alastair Roberts, lamenting his ‘dry spell’ in the romance stakes, complaining that  women only want bad boys. So he’s convinced to go out clubbing (clearly no one told him about Tinder) where he makes nervously awkward pick-up lines – including adopting a racist accent. Has this ever happened in real life? But against all odds he does get lucky with Sabina (London Hughes) and wouldn’t you know it, she has a kink: she can only get turned on if Francis dresses up as a baby.

It smacks of trying too hard to be funny, though in other places the script, from Siblings writers Lucien Young and Joe Parham, just doesn’t try hard enough. They genuinely have someone say: ’OMG your place is amazeballs’ to establish character.

This comes from one of two snarky ex-public-school snobs, depicted as typical aloof, vapid Sloanes whom Alice (Ella White doing the best she can with a succession of ‘god my life is torture’ rich-kid cliches) is determined to impress: pretending to own the Kensington home of one of her pupils just to show how well she’s doing. A lie Doomed to unravel, of course. 

Bekka Bowling plays the third of the trio, whose pupil is away so she finds herself being paid by the lonely middle-aged dad, Paul (Sanjeev Bhaskar), for her company as he goes through a divorce. Whether it’s a ‘sex thing’ is moot. Then Paul takes LSD for the first time, hallucinates and throws himself out of a window. Again, trying too hard.

The show is stuck in a limbo of its own between these highly exaggerated moments and the realistic style. Add in some underdeveloped characters and it all adds up to rather unsatisfying viewing.

• Limbo is one of the BBC Three Comedy Feeds released on iPlayer as part of the BBC’s Landmark Sitcom season. Click here to view.

Review date: 6 Sep 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett