Dr. Brown

Channel 4 has launched 4Funnies, a series of pilots by up-and-coming talents from the live circuit, in the post-pub Friday-night slot. First up was Dr Brown, the alter-ego of the classically trained American clown Phil Burgers who won the Edinburgh Comedy Award this year with a mime show. It turns out that he is just as funny when he allows himself to speak.

This was less a conventional set-up/punchline sketch show, though, than a ramble through a lightly disturbed mind. Toe-curling sketches about a creepy couple were intercut with odd little scenes featuring a babbling mystic in a gaping kimono and fez. There were Trigger Happy-style skits - I loved his weeping jogger - and silent sepia films set to mournful klezmer music. There was a fairly free attitude to full-frontal nudity. When you write it down, it sounds bonkers. And it was, but it was also hypnotic, rather beautiful and one of the most refreshingly odd half hours of pure comedy I've seen in some time.

Dr. Brown is the professionally trained silent clown persona of the American comic Phil Burgers, and the winner of this year's Edinburgh Comedy Award. This week he was the first star of Channel 4's replacement to the Comedy Showcase - the 4Funnies. However, it doesn't seem that the talents that won him that most sort-after of stand-up prizes have made it onto the screen.

Dr. Brown featured various sketch ideas and characters, many of which repeated throughout the show. For me, it's always a problem for any sketch show, because if you don't like the sketch the first time then the chances are you won't like it on repeat viewing.

And sadly, that was the case here too. The only recurring sketch that did make me laugh eventually was that of a jogger going seemingly mad, pouring tonnes of protein and energy powders into his mouth. The funniest sketch was a simple one off, where a character puts sheets of toilet paper on a loo set before using it, before eventually decide to lift up said use it and sit in just the bowl.

I think the problem here is that Dr. Brown is a silent act. These sorts of sketches aren't exactly what I was expecting from him, and I thought the humour would be more visual that it actually was. It may be the case that sketch comedy isn't the right format for this performer and a stand-up TV show would be a better outlet...

If the rest of Channel 4's latest round of 4Funnies pilots provides as many belly laughs as Friday night's opening effort, Dr Brown, there may yet be hope for the future of TV comedy.

But don't ask me to pinpoint why this half-hour collection of sketches made me laugh so much. Because I might say something unhelpful along the lines of its star Phil Burgers simply has one of those faces that can crack you up.

Either way, if you hear anyone exclaiming 'Deeeeeenied!' over the next few weeks you can be certain of one thing. They watched Dr Brown too.

Anyone who's seen Dr Brown's live work, including his triumphant Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning show this year, will be slightly taken aback by his TV pilot. He speaks! Brown - the clowning creation of American Phil Burgers - is largely silent on stage, performing slow-burning mime pieces with an unnerving edge. His small-screen debut is a bundle of short, snappy, subtle sketches, many taken from his Comedy Blaps series on the C4 website. Some skits are wordy, others not, but they're all brilliantly bizarre. We meet an upbeat hippy skateboarder, an emotionally unstable jogger, a jibberish-speaking Kimono-warring nuisance and many unsettling relationships. Much like his live work, the punchlines are often odd and unexpected, with his understated delivery and superb physical comedy skills raising the biggest laughs. Let's hope C4 gives Burgers a series; having been silent for so long, he must have plenty more to say.

4Funnies - Dr Brown: review

25 minutes long: I laughed twice. If we are to do the math (yes I am a geek) then that adds up to about 15 seconds of laughter which in total is about 1% of laughter out of the entire 25 minutes. That's not good maths.

Replacing the Comedy Showcase strand is 4Funnies, which provides promising comic talents a space to showcase their work. First up is Phil Burgers - AKA Edinburgh comedy award-winner Dr Brown. His trade - classically trained clowning, coupled with some disarmingly well-acted vignettes - might sound a bit highbrow, but Burgers is funny. There's some genuinely brilliant invention here, notably his tragic surf dude and the holy man with a penchant for getting his cock out.