Matthew Crosby

Matthew Crosby: Working hard to be silly

We've been performing live sketch comedy together as Pappy's for nearly a decade, so it was great to be able to create something that was distinct from our live shows, but that still had the same big, silly, knockabout energy.

The Typhleotris is a freshwater fish that lives in Madagascar's limestone caves, a habitat of such consummate darkness that nature has not bothered to provide it with eyes. But even the Typhleotris, with a bag over its head, sealed inside a box, would have been able to see the jokes coming in Badults.

Not all the jokes, it has to be said. BBC3's new sketch show/sitcom hybrid served up several that were genuinely inspired and laugh-out-loud funny, suggesting the fault lay in lacklustre quality control rather than any shortfall in comic creativity.

But the wheat was bulked out by an awful lot of chaff, not to mention corn, which is very surprising for an inaugural episode out to impress.

Written and performed by Ben Clark, Matthew Crosby and Tom Parry - hitherto best known as award-winning fringe troupe Pappy's - Badults places immature adults into a flatshare environment, inevitably inviting - and suffering - comparison with a host of other comedies, notably The Young Ones, The Big Bang Theory, New Girl and even the works of the Three Stooges.

It has manic energy to spare, an engaging cast, cheerfully throwaway plotlines and an instinctive understanding of how to extract the most from its predominantly studio-bound setting.

The surreal inserts - Darwin comes alive off a £10 note to comment on the action - look a bit tired, and the central characters need far clearer delineation, but Badults shows a lot of promise.

However, poor Emer Kenny will need an awful lot more to work with if she is going to make any impression as fourth flatmate Rachel, sidelined almost as soon as she appeared and looking every bit the arbitrary, add-on female.

A berserk mix of Les Misérables, board games, pyjamas and beardy men in glasses behaving like 15-year-old nerds, Badults (BBC3) is a kind of Friends for the stunted generation, a British spin on The Big Bang Theory where clueless misfits bond against the world outside.

I'll admit, the first five minutes had me climbing the walls at the unsubtle geekiness of it all - three hopeless blokes and a token woman who, in the real world, would never have been within a mile of them - shouting unfunny lines at each other.

But weirdly, after a while, my defences were broken down by the sheer relentless energy Ben Clark, Matthew Crosby and Tom Perry threw at the screen.

It was like watching a Hollywood movie where a starlet knows it's her big break and gives it her all. Coming on like a sixth-form revue on speed, the Badults gang leapt from musical theatre fantasy to murder weekends to perving over the lady who does sign-language for BBC2 shows with reckless abandon. More exhausting than actually funny, it could be a grower - this lot have ideas coming out of their armpits.

All-male flat-share sitcom from sketch troupe Pappy's, who tasted 2012 Edinburgh fringe glory with their Last Ever Show. It's worth a watch for its strange moments, such as the recurring use/abuse of the Les Mis soundtrack and Matthew's (Matthew Crosby) obsession with the sign language lady off the telly. For the most part, however, the trio's slapstick stand-up doesn't transfer over as well to the small screen as it could in this first episode, although the show may well find its feet a bit more in the coming five weeks.

Another spin on the tried-and-tested flatshare sitcom formula, this one follows the goonish antics of Ben Clark as Ben, Matthew Crosby as Matthew and Tom Parry as Tom - you see what they did there - three thirtysomethings who make The Inbetweeners look like the epitome of sophisticated cool. So if the broad strokes of overgrown schoolboy comedy, with the odd spot of bizarre musical theatre fantasy thrown in, is your bag, then Badults will hit the spot.

Pappy's interview

After being nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award and winning a 2013 Chortle gong, sketch trio Pappy's - aka Tom Parry, Matthew Crosby and Ben Clark - have made their own anarchic BBC Three sitcom, Badults. Here they talk about the show, which is due to air from next month...

Pappy's: sketching out the future

In the eight months since Scout last interviewed Pappy's, the sketch trio have shot up the comedy rankings. Si Hawkins catches up with troupe member Matthew Crosby ahead of a string of dates at Soho Theatre and their first ever sitcom.

The words "Paddy McGuinness" send shivers down your spine - and not in a good way. McGuinness made his TV debut on Phoenix Nights, if you recall, and his career has been going from bad to worse ever since in the eyes of just about every reviewer and critic around.

Paddy's TV Guide follows a spate of cheap clip shows, with McGuinness presenting clips from TV shows (old and new) using a weekly theme. The first episode focused on health and fitness, with shows recorded on his "Paddy Player".

The clips themselves are mildly amusing, from an old exercise show featuring a woman dancing with candles to a tough American fitness instructor shouting at just about any mode of transport. But this programme, along with others like it (BBC One's Animal Antics for example) illustrate what I think is the main problem with clip shows; the way they're presented.

If you have a show which is just about clips, from TV shows, the internet, or recorded by members of the public, then what you want to see is just those clips. You don't want to see Paddy McGuinness doing some small routine in-between them, or Matthew Crosby dressed up as a dog in the case of Animal Antics. All you need's a voice-over.

Harry Hill made You've Been Framed watchable. We all know it's the cheesiest programme around, but because Hill's contribution is minimal, the viewers get to see more of what they want, rather than putting up with Jeremy Beadle and Lisa Riley trying to be funny between the clips.

Of course, it could just be the fact that Hill's funnier than any of those people, and that's probably Paddy McGuinness' biggest flaw too; he's not much cop.

Clip shows can work brilliantly - just ask Harry Hill - but they need a super-sharp script. The home videos have to be good, too. The third instalment of the pet-focused spoof current affairs clip show fails on all counts, with too many cats and not enough good jokes - even Matthew Crosby looks embarrassed, and he's already dressed as Sparky the dog.

Those who sit through cats playing with hairdryers or pawing guitars will be rewarded with the spectacle of two rats balanced on their back feet, staring at each other with tiny human-like hands aloft. There's also a lovebird felling a variety of children's toys. It's not really enough.

Until the last syllable of recorded time, there will ALWAYS be something funny about watching camcorder footage of people falling off garden trampolines. There's one at the end of this Animal Antics that doesn't involve an animal, and it's a piece of pure visual and hubristic poetry.

Elsewhere in a daft pretend news bulletin presented by "anchor" Tim Brooke-Taylor and Sparky the dog (comedian Matthew Crosby) you can rejoice in a baton-twirling bear, dogs sitting like humans on sofas, a dancing poodle and, best of all, a man being attacked by a very angry and persistent goose. Oh, and there's a lot of film of cats doing silly things.