The Kevin Bishop Show

The Kevin Bishop Show appeared on Channel 4 in July and was faster than The Fast Show in its presentation of sketches. Some of Bishop's impressions were perhaps less than perfect, but he displayed enough promise to probably guarantee a further series, even though he was guilty of taking unchecked juvenilia too far. It might be amusing to refer to Wanking The Dead in a pub chat about telly, but surely in the process of making Bishop up as Trevor Eve and finding a corpse for him to masturbate, the 'joke' starts to pall.

Kevin Bishop continues to impress with this scatter-gun collection of spoofs and impressions.

Sketch shows often claim proudly to be 'irreverent' or 'taboo-breaking': The Kevin Bishop Show is the real thing. The easily offended had better give a wide berth to Bishop's spoof of a BBC3-style Songs of Praise and should definitely avoid the filthy take on Waking the Dead that closes tonight's show. Both are wince-makingly funny, though, and that's the thing: Bishop occasionally crosses the line into the outright tasteless, but he's funny enough and sweet-faced enough the rest of the time that we can forgive him. Among other highlights this week are a good running joke on Ross Kemp's hard-nut documentaries, a gay R&B singer and an inspired impression of Harry Hill in his early days as a doctor.

It's virtually impossible to name a sketch show that isn't 'hit and miss', it goes with the territory, but this certainly erred on the side of miss.

More disappointing, however, was how predictable and safe many of the sketches were - I could have written much of this review before the show even began, and that's a real shame.

Half an hour of being peppered by parodies and splattered by spoofs is exhausting stuff - but worthwhile. Even the bits that aren't especially funny are superbly performed by Bishop and his small team.

Kevin Bishop does impressions - of Jonathan Ross, Gordon Ramsey, Al Pacino, lots of people. Generally there's a twist. So Al Pacino is auditioning for Superman, on a DVD that comes free with the Daily Mail. And here's Cowell - not Simon though, his (much) less successful brother Brian. They're still impressions, though. And I'm not really seeing anything I haven't seen on Bremner, McGowan, French and Saunders even. Do we need another? Guess how Americans are portrayed. Fat and stupid. That's just lame.

The first rule of sketch comedy is: if you're going to tell a bad joke, make it short. Elbowing its way into a market already crowded by everyone from Lucas and Walliams to Armstrong and Miller, The Kevin Bishop Show stuck admirably to this maxim. Bishop, the man behind the sporadically hilarious Star Stories, had me chewing my fist in embarrassment at times, and laughing, too.

I particularly enjoyed the American version of Countdown (the letters board read: HAMBURGRE) and Bruce Forsyth's audition for The Shining (axing his way through a door, Heeeeere's Brucie! Nice to see you...). There was satire, including spoof adverts for the fragrances 'Publicity by Sienna Miller' and 'Recession by Gordon Brown'.

By keeping sketches short and silly, Kevin Bishop and his show just about carried the day. But nothing he dreamt up made me laugh as hard as the talking tree.

In Channel 4's British Comedy Award-winning Star Stories, Kevin Bishop was a revelation. Each week his schoolboy-cheeky caricatures of everyone from Tom Cruise to Alex Ferguson stole the show. So Channel 4 gave him his own sketch show.

The pilot earlier this year was, not to put too fine a point on it, poor. All the more reason to rejoice that this first episode of the series proper is in a different league, with a string of impishly silly, very funny ideas, mostly film or TV spoofs.

It doesn't hurt that the pace is ridiculously fast: if you don't like one skit, don't worry, another will be along in seconds.

There's the Daily Mail DVD giveaway that includes Bruce Forsyth's try-out for The Shining; there's Pimp My Ride with Stephen Hawking; there's Sophie's Choice - The Musical; and a visit to Simon Cowell's brother Brian, who runs a convenience store in Rotherham. Best of all there's a running joke about Jonathan Ross that makes it safe to assume Bishop won't be invited on the former's chat show any time soon.

Making a good impression

Kevin Bishop talks to The Telegraph about his new series

Kevin Bishop's new sketch show - like most sketch shows - is a hit-and-miss affair. It is mostly celebrity based, relying on spoofs of TV and film, and his impersonations are deliberately more impressionistic than accurate. But the sketches are so fast that none of the duds have time to do any damage and there are enough imaginative and entertaining flights of fancy to make it all worthwhile.