Max and Iván: Televisionaries

Max and Iván are a comedy double act from London. They both graduated this year from Royal Holloway University where they met and started writing sketches together. They have been at the Festival for four years, amassing a greater crowd each year and building a name for themselves as comic titans of the Fringe. They have been persistently brilliant and yet still somehow lie an undiscovered talent to wider audiences.

The show consists of a series of sketches written by the pair all based loosely around television shows. This is backed by an AV accompaniment provided by a back-lit projector. The AV element of the show fits perfectly with the sketches. Where one would expect something so tech heavy to dominate the show, in Max and Iván it serves as a perfect backdrop to their TV based sketches. And occasionally delivers the killer punch line required to round off a sketch.

Max and Iván take inspiration from all parts of pop culture. This culminates in a tasty melting pot of what this reviewer can only describe as pure unadulterated awesomeness. These sketches stretch from a brilliant commercial for a Martin Scorsese film based on the Mario brothers to the horrible divorce of Mr. and Mrs. Flobadob. The pair have unique and brilliant ideas coming from every orifice imaginable and this shines right through in their show.

It is not often you walk into a show at the Fringe and leave thinking you have seen the paranormal. But in Max and Iván I have seen the future. You can forget Badiel and Skinner, Lucas and Walliams, even Mitchell and Webb. Max and Iván will change the face of double acts forever. Certainly funnier than many sketch shows already on the small screen, TV stardom awaits these two if they wish to take it.