Anna & Katy

Sketch show Anna & Katy axed by Channel 4

"We are talking to them about other projects," says Channel 4 as it tells RadioTimes.com that Anna Crilly and Katy Wix's show will not be getting a second series.

The intermittently brilliant sketch show winds up tonight: it's the annual awards do at Ignition Carwash Solutions and things get ugly between the two apprentice-ettes who run it, in a flurry of can-I-just-stop-you-theres. Meanwhile, the Brummy women who always start their YouTube videos with "It's quite hard to explain if you've never seen it..." are labouring over birthdays. "You have to blow out the fire on a pudding..." is one of their better efforts.

Why are so few watching Anna & Katy? It can't be easy to break through with a new sketch show, but this inspired duo deserve better than a graveyard slot and under half-a-million viewers: they're madly, properly funny. Calling them a female Vic and Bob, as some have, for once isn't empty hype. Even when the scripts aren't especially good, they are, and boy can they nail an accent - something they exploit to the full with their mock-German TV shows. And tonight we have the best edition of Congratulation! yet.

"It's quite hard to explain if you've never seen it," declares one of Anna and Katy's zanier sketch creations in a statement that could equally apply to Channel 4's latest venture into sketch show comedy. Anna & Katy has garnered mixed opinions in its first few weeks with its Vic & Bob-esque surrealism combined with razor sharp pastiches of TV shows such as The Great British Bake Off and The Apprentice. And the fact that it stars two women (all by themselves! Aren't they clever girls!) has caused a certain amount of feather ruffling amongst the still-depressingly-male British comedy establishment.

Well, I love it. I particularly like the spot-on pastiches of naff German TV shows, which this week took on the guise of a sitcom named "das Michael" and was accompanied by an over the top laughter track and some wonderful mangling of the German language - "egg off" and "du is ein octopiss" were two choice insults. It was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, as was The Apprentice rip-off, which was set in a carwash and mercilessly poked fun at nonsense management-speak: "that's we, and by we I mean us".

There was also a darkly weird vign­ette involving some biscuit monitors in a factory with a male boss who wore high heels, which felt like a Chekhov play rewritten by Tom Wolfe.

Not everything worked. The Jamaican accents in the daytime TV spoof Congratulation! were jarring, while a sketch featuring Eamonn ­Holmes felt dragged out. But Anna & Katy makes com­pelling viewing ­because it is brave, clever and different.

Business isn't booming at Ignition Car Wash Solutions as The Apprentice-type team managers trade nuggets ofbusiness-speak numbskullery. It's the perfect pastiche and Katy Wix cleverly pins down all those tics and traits shown by every reality-show contestant who is quietly dying on the inside.

Again some bits of Anna & Katy work better than others. But the cod-German mickey-take of Friends and Seinfeld, Das Michael, has its moments and the spoof TV list-show Countdown of the World's Least Favourite Moments is a dream.

Anna & Katy (Wednesday, Channel 4) is a new British comedy but one which is mostly pastiches of existing TV formats, such as Rice Britannia, a parody of The Great British Bake-Off, and Kuntworts, which is the German version of Countdown. Anna & Katy raises the odd smile but few out-loud laughs, and, rather cheekily, it has exactly the same format as The Armstrong & Miller Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look, with the only difference being that they are women.

Katy Wix is Wales' newest funny girl

Dressing up and putting on funny voices is Katy Wix's full-time job, and she's pleased to report that it's something she's been doing for as long as she can remember.

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.