Totally Tom

The spotlight on ... Totally Tom

Say hello to sketch/character duo Totally Tom, Edinburgh Newcomer Award nominees this year and friends to the stars (kind of).

This week's Comedy Lab pilot was a dark sketch show from Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton.

And by dark, I mean many of the sketches were rather twisted...and rather long. They ranged from a policeman giving an exaggerated interview to a Hollyoaks soap parody set in the Hitler Youth; a pair of poverty stricken Scottish brothers, one of whom keeps spending all their money at a photo booth; two cocaine-fuelled girls who become rather monstrous when they take too much; and an annoying T4 presenter has a crisis of conscience after mocking a man with one giant ear.

The show offers some genuinely shocking imagery, too, like the "coke monster" which one of the cocaine taking girls turns into (resembling a black-eyed ape). Another scene features the T4 presenter and one of his interviewees drooling with insane, evil laughter at the sight of the giant eared man. And the first part of the pilot ends with a man being whipped with a belt in slow motion.

Totally Tom has many interesting ideas, but whether or not they can get enough laughs out of these moments is debatable. Having said that, there are some laughs - the idea of an "Eager Eagle" Nazi vibrator comes to mind. Why I thought of Max Mosley afterwards I have no idea...

Totally Tom review

Overall, Totally Tom is fantastic, well written, well acted and beautifully shot.

Totally Tom, like much of Comedy Lab's recent output, seems hamstrung by the long-running series' remit. Experimental comedy is far more difficult than it looks, clearly, and this paint-by-numbers approach - dark, glitchy visuals reminiscent of Chris Morris' Jam, ill-considered stabs at edgy subject matter - fails to hit the spot. The Tom of the title refers to a duo, Tom Palmer and ]Tom Stourton, who inhabit a collection of wildly diffuse characters, including a pair of cocaine-addled It Girls and a vacuous T4 presenter. Both are clearly talented performers, but there's little here that surprises or breaks new ground.