The first episode of Snuff Box begins with a hanging, and this isn’t just a one-off event in the series. Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher star as a hangman and a hangman’s assistant, respectively, and much of the show centers around their profession and the gentlemen’s club where they go to while away time after work. Snuff Box may not be the darkest sketch comedy show ever made, but it’s certainly up there, and much of the show’s charm comes from its relaxed attitude towards death, sex, swearing and other taboos. Not only does the show take them lightly, it creates a sort of carnival around them, embracing material that could never make it on-air in America.
Berry and Fulcher met through another cult British comedy, The Mighty Boosh, and Snuff Box follows in that show’s tradition of not being quite a sketch show or quite a sitcom. Continuity, when it exists, is sporadic; conversely, though, not only the episodes but the entire series as a whole largely link together in odd ways. Other shows have tried this before, but never so aggressively. What occurs as part of the show’s narrative and what’s a one-off is always hazy, giving Snuff Box a unique tone and pacing. Mixed with random musical interludes written and frequently performed by Berry (who co-wrote the musical AD/BC with Richard Ayoade), Snuff Box attempts to remake the sketch show formula into something more complex.
The show tends towards cleverness and satire rather than full belly laughs, and when Berry and Fulcher broaden their humor Snuff Box almost always misfires. Like a sitcom, many jokes require knowledge of the previous episodes as well as the characters Berry and Fulcher create for themselves. It’s not a show comprised of instant YouTube clips. Snuff Box also slows down a bit towards the end of the series when it’s clear the pair needed a break to refuel themselves, and as a result much of the best material appears in the first couple episodes. But even when the jokes are misfiring—a certainty for any sketch show—Snuff Box is still compelling because it relies less on individual sketch quality than the overall way it’s built. While there aren’t many instant-classic sketches in the series, even the show’s filler is usuallly entertaining enough in some way that it remains enjoyable.