The Midnight Beast

A poor bunch of comedy musicians dream of superstardom: so far, so Flight Of The Conchords. But YouTube faves Stef, Dru and Ash (aka The Midnight Beast) won't be knocking Jemaine and Bret off their pedestal, as this is brighter, breezier and geared firmly towards the Skins/Fresh Meat generation. Though people of all ages will find their slick parodies of commercial pop - including dance-floor 'anthem' Ninja and the sexually charged Begging - have a dorky appeal.

There's a ready-made audience for this bumpy slackercom, and a big one too. The YouTube channel of comedy group The Midnight Beast has had 40 million views to date.

For this six-part series, Dru Wakely, Stefan Abingdon and Ashley Horne star as high-rise musicians living from one blagged pizza, and one low-profile gig, to the next. It's a mashup of The Inbetweeners and Flight of the Conchords; the songs, especially I Kicked a Shark in the Face, bring it alive, but the infill could do with some wit.

If you've ever seen Flight of the Conchords, then the format for The Midnight Beast will be a very familiar one: a sitcom about a failing, penniless band interspersed with their own brand of comedy songs/music videos. And, while their compositions may not reach the lofty hilarity heights of Bret and Jemaine's offerings, Midnight Beast still has much to recommend it. Songs about ninjas and kicking a shark in the face are surprisingly catchy and entertaining, even though the subject matter is well-trodden internet ground (along with bacon, cats and unicorns). With Midnight Beast's drug-addled 'band manager' Chevy, token crazy neighbour Sloman and the band's compulsive scrounging for food and money, there's plenty of comedy mileage in the concept, even though it doesn't feel particularly original.

The Midnight Beast: making the leap from web to TV

Can E4's new sitcom from internet hit The Midnight Beast make a successful switch from web short to 30-minute TV show?

Think, perhaps, of a rap version of The Monkees meets Flight of the Conchords and you might get an idea of this promising new sitcom featuring unsigned comedy band The Midnight Beast. Stefan Abingdon, Dru Wakely and Ashley Horne made their name with a YouTube cover of Ke$ha's Tik Tok and now have their own show which blends music videos and a storyline of them struggling to make ends meet while living in a high-rise squat in east London. Tonight, they try to scam free pizzas and are kicked out of a club for stealing drinks.

Video: The Midnight Beast on 'crazy' new series

The Midnight Beast have promised that their new E4 comedy series will be full of nudity, "eightsomes" and "a lot of crazy things".

Time to see if the millions of hits the titular comedy band have generated on YouTube can translate to viewing figures. This gets off to a great start, as we're introduced to the combo, playing a poverty-stricken, unsigned version of themselves ("We're unsigned because corporations suck ... and because we're shit!"), then it's straight into a cracking music video of them dressed as cardboard tower-block Transformers, rapping about kicking sharks in the face. Like major reference point Flight Of The Conchords, they're too good to pretend to be this bad for long.