Soon-to-be E4 stars Cardinal Burns return to circuit
The faces of Dustin Demri-Burns and Seb Cardinal will soon be on the gogglebox, so why not go see 'em "E4" they get famous, HA!
One of my favourite sketches from the past few years is one that's a pastiche of those smug, back-slapping interviews you get on things like Parkinson, except the interviewee who's talking in pompous actorly terms is a part-time Foot Locker employee. Genuinely makes me chuckle to think about it.
The purveyors of this sketch and plenty more ace ones, Cardinal Burns, are back on the circuit. This is newsworthy because a) they've been away for a year and b) they have an E4 series starting in March. So go take a look, then if the series goes mental, you can be all "ahh yeah I saw them ages ago in a tiny basement in Shepherd's Bush?" (The upward inflection is compulsory).
Hopefully the TV show will do the pair (Dustin Demri-Burns, left, and Seb Cardinal) justice. Live comedy is a delicate beast. It's not like sport. You can't just take along some cameras, add some whooshes and feel the money roll in, it has to be massaged into place. Consequently, many a talented sketch/stand-up hasn't made the conversion to screen once their act has been TV-ified – but CB seem aware of the pitfalls, and are an inventive, charismatic duo, so maybe they'll make that jump.
Seb Cardinal said of the series: "It's a character-led sketch show but not in the traditional sense: we have lots of narratives running through the series and mini-narratives running through each episode. Running characters include a behind-the-scenes look at street artist Banksy, a parody of The Hills where we play two young girls on a fashion internship, and Switch, a privileged spoken word poet.
"There were only a few of our live sketches that made it into the series. A lot of the time, sketches that work live [by] interacting with an audience don't convert well to television, so we would often take characters that we had created for the stage and put them in a very different world that worked better for TV."
Seb added that the pair are highly excited at being back on the circuit and that they will soon be writing a new show to take to the Soho Theatre and Udderbelly.
Among their upcoming London gigs are Popcorn Comedy on Feb 2 (TONIGHT!) and Knock2Bag on Feb 24. For their full gig London listings as it stands, click here.
As a taster, here's an oldie but a goodie: