OK look so I've been accidentally insulting Voice of Lidl Tash Hodgson for the past few weeks on here, so as recompense I'm going to do Another Long Pretentious Tweet Thread about The Sink, but this time focussing on Episode 6 & THE SERIES' REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO SKETCH COMEDY https://twitter.com/NatashaHodgson/status/1320684566789656576

It's hard to describe the format of The Sink, and calling it "just a sketch show" is simplistic
Sketch comedy is often maligned because it's disposable - dynamics, universes and conceits are invented for a joke and then dismissed immediately. There's no permanence, no substance

I say this as a former sketch comedian who absolutely loves sketch - sketches can make an audience *laugh* but it's rare that they can make an audience emotionally invest, and care about the characters - because we know they'll stop existing in two and a half minutes.

So how do you make a sketch show that is more than the sum of its parts?
Most sketch shows will have a vague theme or format - a consistent comedic voice that ties the whole thing together to make it feel less like a series of unconnected scenes and more like a cohesive whole

In Edinburgh, my sketch group would try to write shows that connected sketches together to make a cohesive narrative - that way you're making something that has more substance than a sketch and you can pretend you're creating high art instead of throwing bread at each other

The problem is that the format, the thing which gave the show "substance", would bash up against the essence of sketch comedy, which wants to be disposable, short, silly

I always thought therefore sketch comedy couldn't be both sharp and something you could emotionally invest in

As usual, The Sink destroyed that perception, and it did it in a brilliant, brilliant way

The Sink is an incredibly intricate "format" sketch show, where every sketch has been carefully chosen to tell an overarching narrative - but it only really reveals that in the last episode

The format works PERFECTLY. Because the whole show is an exploration of dreams, Tash uses the anarchic fun of a sketch show (new universes, created and destroyed every two minutes) and yet lets an element of ominous substance run throughout. You know something bigger is happening

The repeating things become clues, helping the audience build the "memory" of what happened through a patchwork of repeated jokes, sounds & phrases

This works so well in Episode 6 that we fully invest in the "real characters", despite never having really met any of them before

I have to say that I was nervous listening to the last episode, because so often these things that walk the line between horror, comedy and mystery can be conceptually brilliant but the eventual revelation is a disappointment. Instead, it was the best episode of the series

I think the reason the ending works so well is that as a writer, Tash never pulls her punches - she never makes you feel foolish for believing in a concept or a joke.

So often absurdist comedy can be cold and mocking - designed to keep an audience at arm's length. Not here.

Tash's writing *is* absurd (the words of the narrator are often purposefully wrong and incongruous), but it never pulls the rug from under the audience, it never undercuts the story she's trying to tell. It's like she's creating her own little absurd language and inviting you in

That commitment to the concept, to allowing the weirdness to come out naturally and rewarding the audience for investing in it, means in the final episode there's a kind of intimacy and emotion in the reveal that I didn't think sketch shows were capable of. Once again, I'm in awe

Anyway, I've blathered on about this long enough and I'm sure you've either muted me or unfollowed, but please check out The Sink, by The Voice of Lidl 2020, @NatashaHodgson