The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fighting

Really just not good enough. Certainly not good enough for prime time on ABC1. It would barely pass muster tucked away late at night on ABC2.

The fundamental problem here is that almost every sketch is based on a "Wouldn't be funny if..." premise, and then goes on to illustrate that premise in a deadly unfunny manner with as few jokes as possible in order to beat any possible humour out of the concept. The gag twists are always painfully obvious and can be seen coming a mile off. It's acted and directed like a series of faux-dramatic vignettes, allowing for little comedy to arise from the presentation of the material.

This series been promoted as containing dark, edgy humour. The writers seem to think that shoehorning the occasional reference to AIDS or cancer makes it so, but there's precious little genuinely dark comedy on display. One promising sketch in episode two, set on an aircraft with two annoying kids, had the potential to go much further and much darker, which would have given the punchline more power, but the creative team pulled their punches instead.

Ultimately this is a joyless, jokeless wasteland. I thought the ABC had reached the nadir of sketch comedy with the ill-fated Flipside, but The Elegant Gentleman's etc has plumbed a new low.

Next time, ABC, before you commission a sketch comedy show, get the writers to sit down and watch some of the successful comedies of the last 50 years to see how it should be done.