Frank Skinner

A new comedy series in which three comedians (this week Frank Skinner, Josh Widdicombe and Roisin Conaty), presided over by Jack Dee, mock the lives and habits of four selected (and willing) audience members. Each round sees the spectator with least comic value being voted off. Desperately unfunny.

Neil (Frank Skinner) and Kim (Katherine Parkinson, The IT Crowd) are back and their verbal jousting is more combative than ever. This couple of bookworms have no children to interrupt their thought processes and so have plenty of time to flash their razor-sharp rapiers of verbal brilliance until there's only one man - or woman - left standing.

As ever, the trigger for a tiff can be as harmless as a nursery rhyme: who'd have thought that Jack Sprat's decision to eat no fat made his wife a repressed woman? The spat that starts with the Sprats ends on a bonding note, where both Neil and Kim agree that singing songs while strumming an acoustic guitar results in painful squirming among one's associates and should always be avoided. The intellectual face-offs might still be full-blown, but now there's an inkling of the love and mutual respect that holds this odd couple together.

Sky comedy is hitting its stride, but this vehicle for Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo's bickering Jewish matriarchs feels like a sideways step. The comic chat-show is fast resembling a dead-end format, it's a schlep at an hour and the so-so line-up for this opener doesn't help. That said, there are a few belly laughs, and kudos to the hosts for making an old pro like Frank Skinner look truly uncomfortable at the sex-obsessed, scatalogical line of questioning. Dirty old cove Charles Dance, meanwhile, positively revels in the prurience, and Alfie Boe looks shellshocked when he isn't hooting with bewilderment. The ad libs are delivered with more conviction than the scripted stuff (and enough with the 'outrageous' Holocaust gags), but there's certainly something to work with here; the prospect of Will Arnett next week is delicious.

Jewish Brooklyn housewives Ronna and Beverley (comic actors Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo) bring their relentless maternal banter to UK shores. Something about that "Excuuuuse me. Terrific. Thenk you" accent makes almost every joke land, no matter how daft. Beverley shoulder-dances nervously throughout while kvetching about her labia. Ronna cuts through celebrity egos with her verbal exocets. They're terrifying and great fun once you get used to the kinetic speech patterns. Frank Skinner, Charles Dance and Alfie Boe are their first victims.

You can tell Ronna and Beverly's new chat show has been honed by their stage act, so easily do they spark off each other. Ronna and Bev are thirtysomething writer/actors Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo, who play two bickering fiftysomething Jewish mothers who give relationship advice based on their book, You'll Do a Little Better Next Time. Described as Dr Ruth meets Mrs Merton with, perhaps, a touch of Ab Fab, they grill their guests about the more personal sides of their lives. In the chair tonight, undergoing Ronna and Beverley's often inappropriate "cross-examination", are Frank Skinner, Charles Dance and Alfie Boe.

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