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Oct 31, 2011 Web Exclusive By John Everhart

As a highly idiosyncratic British sketch series, Snuff Box defies easy characterization via its sheer inventiveness and irreverence. The show follows the travails of hangmen (yes, hangmen) Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher as they navigate a surreal landscape riddled with time travel, sordid subterfuge, stolen diaries, and Old Grey Whistle parodies. But it remarkably never becomes too convoluted so as to become incomprehensible, yet pushes into a sublimely phantasmagoric Mr. Show-esque territory via brazenly ambitious hallucinogenic sketches, with the proceedings folding in on themselves like mirrors facing each other.

It does take some acclimation initially, as the puerile and risqué gags often push the same taboo buttons Strangers With Candy and The Chappelle Show poked at, and the payoffs are frequently morosely pitch-black. But stick with it and you’re rewarded with one of the finest, and most underrated sketch comedies of the past 20 years.

Extras on the DVD set include a superb Taking Care of Your Body short in which comedians from Weird Al Yankovic to Rob Corddry to Paul Rudd try to pinpoint the show’s elusive appeal. But they can’t, which is perhaps the greatest testament to Snuff Box’s ineffably twisted genius. (www.severin-films.com)

Author rating: 9/10