In 2022, the comedians Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou released the first series of Ellie & Natasia, their very silly, very surreal and hugely underrated sketch show. Separately, White and Demetriou are successful performers, with White appearing in Man vs Baby and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy among others, while Demetriou may be best known as Nadja in the popular vampire sitcom What We Do in the Shadows. Together, they conjure up a strange, staccato comedy magic, as proven in Stath Lets Flats, the popular, sometimes divisive series created by Demetriou’s brother Jamie, in which both had recurring roles.
There is something slightly old-fashioned about their approach to comedy. It hearkens back to an earlier era of television, when duos like French & Saunders or Reeves & Mortimer were titans of the small screen. TV sketch comedy has been written off for a number of years now, losing its crown to online content and a marked shift towards stand-up, but there are signs that its popularity may be rising once again. Look at the surge of admiration for Saturday Night Live: UK, which is as much about timeless, weird, off-the-wall sketches as it is about political satire and state-of-the-world commentary.
White and Demetriou make their return, then, into what may be a more accommodating landscape, though at just three episodes, fans may feel a little short-changed. (Both women were pregnant while planning the series, which, they say, meant it had to be written and filmed very quickly.) The first run spoofed pop trends, outfit-of-the-day vox-pops and braying foodfluencers. The new series takes on OnlyFans-style livestreaming, though the erotic qualities of mashed potatoes will remain a topic of debate. And they bring back the Mums, now reviewing different brands of supermarket sliced white bread, from the front seat of their SUV.
While familiar favourites like Internet Nails also return — with cousins Donna and Nikki still peddling their DIY beauty salon services, which now include baby makeovers (“Thank you, my baby is a pop star horse rider”) and luxury birthing suites — there are new skits about shopping in luxury tat stores and glamorous podcasts in which nothing of substance is ever said. There is toilet humour and an elaborate visual gag about Mary Poppins visiting a gynaecologist, complete with Steve Coogan cameo. Best of all is a short documentary-style film about two women who run a miniatures shop, despite having gigantic “girthy” hands. It is all as gleefully daft as it sounds.
Ellie & Natasia is light-footed, fast and irreverent, particularly when spoofing the internet’s insatiable appetite for content. Humour is, of course, always subjective and its flights of fancy may not be for everyone, but in the uncertain and unsteady world of TV sketch shows, this is top-flight stuff.
★★★★☆
On BBC2/iPlayer on Wednesdays at 10pm from October 21