Cowards

The best comedy of 2019

Another year has past and once again it's been a pretty amazing one for comedy across the board, and it's been hard to whittle each category down to a top 10. But here are our suggestions for the best tv, film and live comedy of the year, along with a couple of other lists as well.

Cult Classics: Cowards

The series received a lot of praise from the press, and yet a second series was bizarrely not given to them which is frustrating and disappointing.

Wednesday is such a dog day afternoon of a night it's been a mighty relief to turn to the re-run of Cowards (BBC4) for a spot of comic diversion and a puzzle over 'a hug and a cuddle: they're two very different things'.

This sketch show had so much going for it - it's not a panel game, it's got four strong characters, it's actually clever and funny - that obviously it got only three episodes without a sniff of any more. Yet more proof of the lunacy of the BBC commissioning department: the comedy cavemen and judges of Cowards could have run and run.

This sketch show didn't attract much attention on its first run earlier this year, but is worth revisiting. Yes, it's frightfully Footlights-y and the quiet, deadpan delivery isn't new, but Tim Key, Stefan Golaszewski, Lloyd Woolf and Tom Basden take just enough risks to set themselves apart. There's a running longform sketch where they all live absurdly together in a caravan, while the highlight of each episode tends to be a wilfully random, spectacularly insulting animation about celebrities' private lives. From these mild surprises come laughs.

More smart ideas from the likeable combo. Their Partridgian misfits and Colin Hunts soon pall, but the oddball stuff is terrific: the chain of resentment set up by some dropped coins; the host who overinvites to a party; and "Martin Clunes Knocky Door", a cartoon that's as stupidly funny as its title.

Does BBC Comedy have some sort of Soviet five year plan to quintuple the production of sketch shows? Is there a sketch show arms race being fought with a rival broadcaster?

Cowards is yet another one, but I have to say that it is funny and original enough to stand out from an ever increasing crowd. The humour is a mix of the deadpan and the surreal, performed with subtlety and skill. Having said that, episode one was stolen by a long haired terrier who - assisted by subtitles - was trying to explain through barking that he was actually a man under a witch's curse.

Blog Review

Cowards is a new sketch show that doesn't completely suck. I mean it's still hit-and-miss, but the great thing about Cowards is that I don't mind watching the misses because they're still being performed by hugely watchable comedians.

In this new sketch series from comedy quartet Cowards, performance is stronger than punchline. This is no bad thing: the deadpan-absurdist approach works well, especially with the rooftop judiciary and worryingly precise job-seeker. But the schoolboy schlock (a Russian roulette soiree) doesn't.

Individually, Tom Basden, Stefan Golaszewski, Tim Key and Lloyd Woolf have caused quite a stir on the live comedy circuit, and their shared love of deadpan, absurd and irreverent humour shines out in this inventive, enjoyable and subtle sketch show. Particularly pertinent highlights include a middle-class game of Russian roulette where adhering to the rules is paramount, and a job seeker whose only aim is to become Mick Hucknall's PA.

Sketch shows rarely justify the sum of their parts, but there is sometimes an exception. Adapted from the Radio 4 show, the cowards in question are comedians Tim Key, Tom Basden, Stefan Golaszewski and Lloyd Woolf and their act works because the sketches are a blend of the subtle, imaginative and absurd. Scenarios include an excruciatingly dark Russian-roulette dinner-party game.