Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Barrelling on to an extremely tuneless rewrite of The Final Countdown comes Mates Rates, an Aussie social media sketch trio bringing their work to the Fringe for the first time. 

Claiming to be in dopamine withdrawal, they provide every seat with a small plastic orb for us to throw at them whenever we want to 'give them a like'. It’s not clear how that decision is sitting with them, as they never look very pleased when someone throws a ball at them mid-sketch.

The sketches are performed with more noise and speed than they warrant, but there are some good bits in there, primarily in the dialogue and the texture of the scenes. As you might expect from social media comedians, they’re good at establishing a weird new character very quickly, particularly Sammy Crawford-Smith, who stands out a little from his teammates Kristo Hakola-Parry and Thomas MacDonald in terms of performance chops and ad libbing capabilities.

In terms of real laugh lines though, it’s a little lacking, and there are parts of the show that feel lazy or underworked. For starters they spend about half their allotted time simply not on stage. A sketch about a drunk alien in a bar has a video punchline that’s longer than the actual sketch, and it’s quickly followed by another very long video about a boys’ private school, which laboriously introduces all of the many characters in the sketch, only for them all to come out and introduce themselves in person all over again as soon as the video finishes. 

Between sketches, there’s also a frankly muddled running bit with a televised AI that seems to be ushering in the ‘golden age’ of the title. It comes up repeatedly but never goes anywhere or has any good lines, and its relationship to the rest of the show is unclear at best.

Finally, we get a military-themed ‘Who’s On First’ variant with General Consensus, Colonel of Truth, Private Parts etc that is really pretty dire, and then the show is resuscitated by the final sketch World’s Sexiest Magicians, in which the magicians keep getting sad and admitting to accidentally causing house fires. It’s one of a few moments in the show where a funny idea is realised effectively, but otherwise this is a production that would benefit from more consistency and experience.

Review date: 25 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Tim Harding
Reviewed at: Pleasance Dome