Ellie & Natasia review – please give us more of this irresistibly weird comedy

In 2022, comics and actors Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou starred in six bite-size episodes of their self-titled sketch show. Among the highlights: a woman who makes wild swimming her whole personality before realising she hates freezing water; a pair of overbearing, overopinionated mums who vlog from a sterilely clean kitchen (“you’re not a real mum unless you’re redecorating or knocking through at least six times a year”) and, of course, Internet Nails, about two decidedly useless eastern European beauty entrepreneurs who were branching out into a variety of business ideas (“please let us scratch you with our ink today, and if you change your mind we can burn the tattoo off with professional match”). It was often hilarious, and was definitely weird, with many parallels to the offbeat Channel 4 series Stath Lets Flats (which White and Demetriou starred in alongside the latter’s brother, its creator Jamie).

Four long years later – reportedly due to scheduling clashes – the duo are back. Ellie & Natasia series two comprises just three episodes, although – gladly – these episodes are now half an hour long rather than a mere 15 minutes. Internet Nails, in particular, remains a crucible for unsettling comedy, with the salon having become a “premiere relax styling and elegance lounge for all makeup, hair straightening and spray tanning mother-baby needs”). The fact that both women were pregnant at the time of filming only makes it funnier, and the low-rent experience (“100% birthing penthouse with perfect lukewarm Jacuzzi”) is deeply silly and – for anyone who has gone to a slightly shonky beauty shop before – astutely observed. The judgy mums are back, too, complete with advice on how to make your wardrobe stretch from “conception to birth, birth to night, night to bed, bed to menopause, menopause to coffin, and coffin to hell …”

Influencers have become even more inescapable since White and Demetriou’s first series, and the parodies are plentiful. These include two women who speak gobbledegook into their podcast microphones, while their hats get bigger and bigger with every scene (“don’t just dress for the job you want,” White implores. “If you want the dress, job for it”). There’s also a bit about a sack-wearing, trad wife-style content creator (White) who enjoys eating croissants, making collages and, er, keeping the woman her boyfriend cheated with locked up in her basement. So silly, so irresistible.

Of course, this is a sketch show, so not everything lands. The two women who spend hours in posh shops fondling candles and cooing are relatable but the concept wears thin, even when Sian Clifford pops up as a wonderfully exasperated shopkeeper. An OnlyFans parody that involves the pair eating grapes and mashed potatoes out of their cleavages feels more like an in-joke. See also: Mary Poppins at the gynaecologist, complete with what can only be described as dangerously cavernous nether regions. Unfortunately, that four-year gap also means that Mitchell and Webb pipped them to the post with a Repair Shop send-up in Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping, even if White and Demetriou’s version is funnier, with a better payoff.

Luckily, there’s much that does work – eccentric and sometimes touching vignettes of life that don’t punch down but do cock a snook at almost every area of society, from a “wee little shop selling tiny mini wee things” in Scotland to Lime bike addicts to aspirants like Donna and her cousin Nikki, who composes a rap about Dubai chocolate’s pistachio filling. A Crystal Maze-style gameshow about a man who needs to get rid of all the snakes that are ruining the foundations of his house (“I sleep with a knife on a stick!”) probably doesn’t say much about anything, actually, but it is totally hysterical. Ditto a Fonejacker-esque recurring bit where Demetriou pops up to declare “I made it, it was me!” about everything from a pot plant to a high-rise building to a pen. A special mention, too, for “Women’s-Only Only Fools and Horses”, a new musical stage adaptation of the TV series (a sheepskin-clad Demetriou explains: “Strip it back and at its heart it’s a very serious story about three generations of working-class men …”).

The series also manages to pack in a ridiculous surfeit of British comedy talents, from Jamie Demetriou to Steve Coogan, Katy Wix to Asim Chaudhry, Kiell Smith-Bynoe to Vicki Pepperdine. But, of course, its brightest lights are White and Demetriou. “Pregnant and doing a sketch show? Does that make it funnier?” asks Demetriou in one of the transition scenes where the two women natter to each other. Not necessarily, but I could easily watch another 10 episodes.