Katy Wix

Anna & Katy was a prime example of how not to do TV sketch comedy - coming off as little more than a lame college revue.

Is talking in a funny accent automatically hilarious? Anna Crilly and Katy Wix clearly think so because that's what they seem to do for the majority of the dog's breakfast that is Anna & Katy.

From an opening sketch featuring the pair of them attempting (I think) some kind of comedy Caribbean on a daytime TV show, by way of a naff stab at pidgin German, here was an object lesson in how not to be funny.

Well, that's my take. I'd held off reviewing Anna & Katy for three episodes, giving it a chance to settle down after an opening effort that left me cold. Some good things were written about it. Had I missed something? No, it still felt like a spectacularly lame college comedy revue, where just saying the word 'knob' is guaranteed a laugh because everyone's off their heads. Why C4 has this garbage on its main channel is a mystery.

The idiot-speak in Anna Crilly and Katy Wix's spoof The Apprentice is frothing nicely: "Business in the workplace can help achieve synergy for tomorrow," says a gormless team-member. Or, my favourite, "Can I just answer that myself with a 'no'?" smarms Wix, as a vacuous project manager. Some sketches work better - much better - than others. Crilly and Wix as two butch quadbike instructors and an obscene game show fronted by Brian Dowling are weak and over-long. But Olden Roadhaus, the foul-mouthed German version of Antiques Roadshow, is a winner.

Anna Crilly and Katy Wix interview

Channel 4's new comedy double act Anna & Katy talk about the perception of female comics.

It's usually the kiss of death to hail a female comedy duo as 'the new French & Saunders - but these two, Anna Crilly and Katy Wix, might actually live up to the label.

They do less in the way of character comedy, but their sketches and TV pastiches are often brilliant. This week's treats include the excruciatingly cheesy sofa show Congratulation! (presented, for no reason at all, in a rich Caribbean accent); a soap sponsored by an optician, with product placement galore; Ignition Carwash Solutions solemnly pondering why they have yet to wash a singer car; and a German version of Antiques Roadshow, in which every item is a sausage. Hilariously daft.

Ten years together on the live comedy circuit, not to mention supporting roles in Lead Balloon and Not Going Out respectively, means Anna Crilly and Katy Wix arrive on TV as a duo with a chemistry and skill in their performance that are well above average. Theirs is a wilfully ragged and silly show, based on TV spoofs that seem over-familiar (The Apprentice, EastEnders, C4 clip/list shows) but are more than rescued by the acting - and by big belly laughs sneaking up unexpectedly.

Female double acts are rare enough to be treasured, which is why it was no fun at all to see Watson & Oliver take an undeserved pasting in theartsdesk's comment stream, mostly from blokes, when it debuted on the BBC last year. Anna Crilly and Katy Wix, who write as well as star, take light entz idioms as their springboard: Eurolottery shows, cookery programmes, workplace docusoaps, reality. The performances are a treat - Crilly's turn as a dour housekeeper in Lead Balloon is clearly just one string to her bow - but the material doesn't feel quite honed enough. There's a dash of verbal incontinence, a bit of Gervaisery, some Dom Jolyesque physical surrealism and lashings of protean vocals. The most original gag features a Joan Collins-alike who requires a prompter to tell her own life story. The funniest line in this episode came as Martin Kemp (one of several game guest stars) plugged his new CD on a Benelux channel. "Great piss!" said Dix's enthusiastic presenter. After two episodes this is more like quite good piss.

There are many more hits than misses in Anna Crilly and Katy Wix's sketch comedy as the pair take aim and fire at television tropes. The best bit is a perfect pastiche of those terrible Top 100 scissors-and-paste list shows that were once a Channel 4 staple. Crilly and Wix make a good job of skewering the kind of talking-head contributors that no one's ever heard of: "Jane Dudgeon - Remembers Things" and "Jenny Crumb - Had a Column Once". There's a clever Apprentice spoof where contestants talk heightened passive-aggressive nonsense ("Totally with respect because I do respect you") and Ruby Wax guest-stars as herself (the show is directed by her husband Ed Bye).

When this show was first broadcast as a Comedy Lab pilot, I mentioned at the time some of the ideas appeared to be a bit limited, while others were repeated far too often. But this new series of Anna & Katy is a vast improvement on the original outing.

Written and performed mainly by Anna Crilly and Katy Wix, most of the sketches take the form of TV show parodies. Rice Britannia (Great British Bake Off with the only dish being bowls of rice), Küntwords (a German Countdown), and Ignition (a car servicing firm parodying The Apprentice) all make an appearance.

There's also Congratulation!, a series of sketches from the pilot, where the hosts congratulate minor things, with the "Biggest Congratulation" being displayed via the hosts... showing their censored vaginas.

I liked most of the sketches. Personal favourites included The Lane, a naff soap opera sponsored by an optician (resulting in the whole plot being driven towards promoting their glasses), and a poll show called World's Worst Word, which featured a comedian who looked not too dissimilar to Chris Ramsey.

Anna & Katy deserves to become a hit.

Anna & Katy, a new sketch show from Anna Crilly and Katy Wix, included a skit about a dinner party at which no one could recognise a joke until it was laboriously pointed out to them, at which point they roared completely out of proportion to the feeble quip that had been made. It was quite an interesting sketch but not terribly funny, which was also true of most of the programme, though some sketches made a little interesting go a very long way, including an interminable Countdown pastiche and a baffling spoof of daytime telly. These people can deliver a funny line, but they were struggling with a serious shortage of that particular commodity.

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.