Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson are intimidatingly good friends. They’re the type of pals who can speak to each other in personal jokes and the conversation would sound like a completely different language to whoever was listening in. But, luckily for us, we’re allowed in on the jokes too.
There’s Clive, who was in the top maths set and had nits, and Robertson, who was popular and was fingered early on in her teens. An unlikely friendship develops, and 15 years later, they have a BBC Three pilot and are back at the Edinburgh Fringe with a new show, ‘Friends and Nothing More’, performed together as ‘Britney’.
It’s a sweet, giggly journey through school talent shows, learning to heely as an adult, and finding love. We’re taken through various sketches, from a new dating app to a spin on Beauty and the Beast. The Stephen King sketch is brilliant, as is the wild west interpretation of Facebook. There are bad puns and there’s a lot of mischievous banter, all performed with a childish cheekiness that is both annoying and infectious. We have the beautiful privilege of being welcomed into their invincible friendship, something that makes the whole thing feel incredibly effortless.
Some of the jokes feel a bit stale. I’m not sure if that’s because they’re immature (and not in a good way) or if they were just a bit obvious – almost like some of their observations were already said on Twitter back in, like, 2020. There’s definitely an intimacy about the show, and the whole thing is very well put together, but they’ll need to refresh of some of their material to keep things hot in the future.
