Anna Crilly

Is the sketch show dead? Obviously not in the eyes of commissioners, because here's another one. But does the format still have legs? That's a tougher question. As is always the way, this new Anna Crilly and Katy Wix offering (coming after a Comedy Lab pilot in 2011) is hopelessly patchy. The Great British Bake Off spoof doesn't really go anywhere and soap parody The Lane doesn't even start anywhere. But elsewhere, there's some promise.

The pair are strong on detail, skewering the grammar-mangling of The Apprentice ('you should have cleared that with myself') and crafting a pungently German take on Countdown, complete with oompah band interludes. So as a standalone show, this has its moments. All the same, we anticipate the numbing effect of seeing these sketches repeated, with minor variations, for the rest of the series and wonder if talented comedians couldn't find a better format to deliver their ideas.

Interview: Anna & Katy

We talk to Anna Crilly and Katy Wix about the C4 series that was almost called "Chicken & Farts".

How we met: Comedy duo Anna & Katy

Comedy partners and sketch surrealists Anna Crilly and Katy Wix talk about how they first met and their first impressions of each other.

Like many comedy sketch shows, this first outing from likeable duo Anna Crilly and Katy Wix is a hit-and-miss affair. That's fine, though - the pair are still settling in and their skewed take on TV favourites offers plenty of promise. "Congratulation", a daytime show spoof done in West Indian accents falls flat, but there's a hilarious Scandinavian version of Countdown (complete with bewigged cameo from Lee Mack) and they nail the ludicrous business banter of The Apprentice to a tee.

Anna & Katy interview

A couple of years after their well-received Comedy Lab, Anna Crilly and Katy Wix have finally got their own full-length sketch show, which starts this Wednesday on Channel 4.

You'll never watch Countdown in the same way again after seeing comedians Anna Crilly and Katy Wix's hysterically funny and rather rude German version of the quiz show. It's just one of the laugh-till-you-cry sketches in the duo's brand-new series. We defy you not to giggle as the girls do an uncanny pastiche of TGBBO's Me and Sue presenting tent-based boil-off show Rice Britannia. And Lord Sugar had better watch out, as the pair full of a hilarious send-up of The Apprentice. Genius.

Helen Stephens, falsely imprisoned for murder, is forced to share her cell with a German cannibal on a prisoner-exchange. Played by the splendid Anna Crilly (of Lead Balloon), even she can't rise above the jokey German accents and weak gags in this curious misfire from Sharon Horgan.

There are good moments, just not enough. In this third episode they belong to Edward Hogg as Henry, a workmate with an unfortunate centre parting who is secretly obsessed by Helen. He can't quite keep a lid on his feelings during a prison visit, telling his beloved that her shampoo makes her "smell like the inside of a taxi".

Good ol' Sharon Horgan. She so rarely puts a foot wrong that it's a wonder she isn't representing Great Britain in the Olympics balance beam event. Nothing changes as we reach the third episode of Dead Boss, where she continues to ring up the laughs with a performance alternates between flustered, histrionic and deadpan. Tonight, Horgan's character, Helen, is lumbered with a new cellmate as part of a prison exchange with Germany: Gertrude (Anna Crilly), 'a 46-year-old widowed cannibal'. Helen's charged with the task of going to 'show her where she can get a souvenir tattoo done - that sort of thing' by the warden. Helen can't fail unless she wants her legal aid application quashed. Sounds hackneyed. Actually, it's anything but. Very funny.

Confession time. I didn't review Dead Boss (BBC3) when it began last week. Here's why. I'm a big fan of Sharon Horgan, who co-wrote and stars in it. Pulling, which she also co-wrote and starred in, was fabulous, one of my comedy highlights of recent times. But this was pretty lame - and tame - in comparison. I wanted to like it, but couldn't.

So I ignored it. Perhaps it needed time to bed in (pah!), and would get into its stride in week two. I told myself I was giving it a chance by deferring judgment, when of course I was really simply bottling it.

This episode is maybe a bit better. There are some nice lines: "Mia casa, tua casa, is that German, erm, mein Kampf is your Kampf?" Horgan's character Helen tells her new prison exchange cellmate Gertie (played by Anna Crilly, whose German accent is pretty much the same as the indeterminate eastern European one she has as Magda in Lead Balloon). And some nice performances (Emma Pierson's stands out, as the dead boss's widow). But, let's be honest, it's not good - neither wonderfully anarchic nor wonderfully rude, as Pulling was. It lacks that conviction and confidence. It's old-fashioned, unadventurous and, more serious still, unfunny.

Oh God, my confession gets worse, it was a bigger bottle even than that. Sharon Horgan follows me on Twitter. I was like an excited little boy when she did, given that I don't just follow her, I practically stalk her. Now I'm like someone who's pestered her forever for a kiss, she's finally relented (out of pity), and I'm running around saying her breath stinks. Let's face it though; it does. Not literally, but her sitcom does.

I say she follows me, I'm sure she doesn't any more. Oh well. Nothing - and no one - comes between me and critical integrity ... Yeah, shush now.

If the second part of last week's double bill seemed slow, here's a cracker of an episode to drive the series along. Anna Crilly (Magda in Lead Balloon) steals the show as German cannibal Gertrude Wermers, who comes to the prison on an exchange programme, much to Top Dog's delight. In the office, there's more news about the mystery of the lottery syndicate, and Mr Bridge's widow makes her presence felt by removing the Nespresso machine.