Clarkson And Crouch: Neighbourhood Watch
Live Review

In Neighbourhood Watch, Rob Crouch and Jonathan Clarkson work their way through a dozen or so sketches with the determination of a suitor trying out a succession of compliments on an uninterested woman. They appear wearingly certain they'll eventually unleash something that will provoke the desired response.

In fairness to the duo, a generous Fringe audience gave them some of the laughter they sought but often their carefully-written script failed to engage and whole sketches passed without the slightest titter. It doesn't help that the pair are not yet word perfect – a show as tightly scripted as this cannot afford for the performers to fluff their lines – but they both regularly had to correct themselves and it jarred each time.

Only a foolish act would begrudge any of the laughs they receive but it must be slightly galling for these two that their most successful sketch turns out to be the feeblest on offer. It's a piece which features Clarkson as the devil and has him announcing that he's searching for "Idle Hans". This, it turns out, is a launching pad for a series of puns which induce a surprising amount of laughter as well as the inevitable groans.

The duo's strongest performance comes in a sketch which imagines Byron and Shelley as modern-day road sweepers who are unable to practise the poetry they love because in 'Broken Britain' it's a useless self-indulgence. The use of florid and archaic vernacular rubs anachronistically against descriptions of modern dilemmas to good comic effect and the pair deliver difficult lines with winning confidence.

Some of the other sketches feel wholly derived from established comedy templates. When the duo volley complaints back and forth while dressed as cockney housewives, Rob Crouch's beard undermines the impersonation in the same way as Graham Chapman's once did in Monty Python's Flying Circus but this isn't really the comparison that comes to mind... instead, it's the more recent memory of two blokes dressed as housewives for a kitchen towel commercial that fills the head. It is not, to say the least, what the comedians can have been aiming for. Depressingly, a sketch featuring an East European is entirely reliant on tired clichés about vegetables and nuclear material.

The show ends with a flourish as the pair portray a pair of extra-terrestrials who have learned Earth's languages by listening to television broadcasts.  It's an energetic routine and makes good use of its central conceit... but its success can't disguise the lack of spark in what went before.