Review: It's Adam & Shelley, BBC3, Sunday, 9:30pm

DESCRIBED AS “slightly surreal”, this sketch show from sibling scriptwriters “Adam & Shelley” Longworth delivers a plethora of new characters to your previously quiet and unsullied screen.

In the first episode we’re introduced to goth siblings Jake and Tilly, the relationship of which seems to boil down to Tilly making Jake do something inane, gross and usually violating to random people in public spaces. Although perhaps we should be impressed at the show’s capacity for providing so many layers of offence and disgust in such a short space of time.

I can’t help but skip quickly over the generic Australian scientists, Brett and Shane, brimming with stereotypical Aussie jokes. Chelsea Sheraton shows up to take us through a few more painfully limp minutes and leads us into one of the vaguely funny sketches, “Orc Dad”. I say funny because the concept, as in some parts of the show, is actually quite promising. Orc Dad’s daughter has brought her boyfriend round who soon finds himself proving his worth through conjuring tricks. Orc Dad, however, is still left struggling with finding the end of the sellotape having been subdued by shadow puppets.

Instead of sticking with some of the potentially funny concepts and keeping it at a slightly more cerebral level where comedy could follow, each sketch ends up resorting to the lowest common denominator and misses the mark entirely.

Brucie and Lucky Lee are prime examples of this. A rip off of poorly dubbed imported East Asian cinema and television, It’s Adam & Shelley actually delivers a quality comedy interpretation in movement, effects quality and dubbing, but the sketch’s content is sorely lacking in enough amusement to make the characters an overall success.

If you’ve watched any other BBC3 sketch shows then welcome to Groundhog Day. A sketch show format is, inevitably, formulaic but BBC3 comedies have almost always been about gross-out comedy and “It’s Adam & Shelley” keeps up the tradition.

A second episode might see the characters become a little more refined, a bit like polishing a rough diamond. Except this isn’t a diamond, and I’d be dropping to the show’s level if I wrote what they’d really be polishing. BBC3 has pulled off gross-out comedy in some really funny ways in the past but this isn’t one of them.