Burnistoun

A starring vehicle for venerable Scottish comedy scribes Iain Connell and Robert Florence (whose credits include the unfairly overlooked Gregor Fisher sitcom Empty), Burnistoun is an amiable yet decidedly unremarkable sketch show. This is disappointing as they are clearly talented.

But at least they have the courage to produce sketches dependent on verbal playfulness and ideas rather than repeated catchphrases or lazy cruelty.

Their hit rate may be scarce (although I liked the parochial Scottish MP unwittingly elevated to the role of PM), but I cautiously welcome any sketch show in the approximate tradition of, say, Absolutely over the abysmal Little Britain. Maybe it will improve, although the idea is normally that you put some of your best material in the first episode...

Paul Whitelaw, The Scotsman, 3rd March 2010

Connell and Florence interview

Meet comics Robert Florence and Iain Connell, the duo who are set to take over from Scottish comedy kings Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill...

Graeme Donohoe, The Scottish Sun, 17th February 2010

There was much crazed comedy to savour in Burnistoun, a scabrous and diamond-sharp new sketch show which should propel its Glaswegian creators and lead performers, Robert Florence and Iain Connell, to the best kind of overnight stardom: the sort which is justly deserved by those who've served years-long apprenticeships.

Having toiled for more than a decade as scriptwriters on such TV hits as Chewin' The Fat, Legit and Empty, Florence and Connell know how to craft singular characters, bizarrely-believable situations and pithy real-life dialogue that will induce helpless laughter.

My personal favourite from F&C's long-overdue solo show amounted to a searing expose of the authentic workings of the Scottish tabloid newspaper industry, as exemplified in The Burnistoun Herald's day-to-day operations. This fictional organ was edited, you see, by a pint-sized monomaniac who insisted on every news story being re-written according to his personal definition of "news" and "story".

We thus saw the gradual evolution of an accurate but mundane report of three masked men walking into a bar into something that would substantiate a ridiculous and attention-grabbing headline: one man in a top hat rolling into a granny's verandah, opening a packet of crisps, thereby prompting a woman to receive a spanking.

As the Burnistoun Herald's witless editor jubilantly exclaimed: "Now we're selling newspapers."

Elsewhere in F&C's contemporary urban Scots dystopia, two street-wise priests strutted, their gallus demeanour echoing that of Charlie Nicholas as they staged a free-market exercise in Roman Catholicism ("Who's got a sin? Anybody out there wi' a sin?"). Burnistoun Tourist Board worked hard to devise a slogan for the town: "It's better than people are makin' it out to be."

Burnistoun's ice-cream van was meanwhile being operated by a sinister fraternal variant on camp interior designers Colin and Justin: Walter and Paul. Walter and Paul are brothers who squabble sibilantly over every item their van has on sale. Walter kept insisting each bar of chocolate belonged to him. Paul wore a beret and wound up having his nether regions brutally exposed. It was all very, very funny - if a trifle too laddish at times. Burnistoun: you wouldn't want to live there, but if you're a lover of comedy, you'd love to see the place again. Pray there'll be a series.

David Belcher, The Herald, 26th February 2009