CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Whip crack one-liners and fresh ideas … the sketch program is back
Ellie and Natasia (BBC3)
Everything I know about love (BBC1)
Rating: 
Why does the Beeb do this? At the start of any major sporting event, from the Olympics to the World Cup, the schedules for the main channels are torn up.
On the first day of Wimbledon, a week’s EastEnders was thrown on iPlayer, and the rush-hour drama Sherwood was moved sideways to BBC2 without notice.
If the Corporation’s CEOs knew how sports really work, they would realize that most viewers do not care much about the opening matches. Of course, we want to see Rafa in the direction of Novak, but if that happens, it will not be in the first week.
Wimbledon, and every other sports festival, should be limited to BBC3 or BBC4 until at least the quarter-final stages.
Even better, make one of those backwaters a dedicated sports service. Sky has been doing this for decades, so why can Auntie not?
Yet one of the minority channels is well utilized with the sketch program Ellie & Natasia (BBC3), a fast-paced compendium featuring two comic actresses of extraordinary versatility.
BBC3 comedy duo Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou appear in Ellie & Natasia, a BBC Three sketch show
Ellie White is best known as the unspeakable dull princess Beatrice on C4’s royal satire The Windsors. Natasia Demetriou won praise as the enamored vampire Nadja in What We Do In The Shadows, and opposite her brother Jamie in the BAFTA award-winning cringe comedy Stath Lets Flats.
But you will be hard pressed to recognize them as some public schoolboys offering a cooking program for poshos, or dressed in baby doll dresses and pigtails like Ariana Grande looks.
Sketch comedy has been out of fashion for years, perhaps because it burns so many ideas greedily. In a single 15-minute slot, the couple plugged in at least eight sketches, from whip-crack-one-liners featuring a dominatrix duo to an elaborate routine about a canteen lady sipping a terrine at a business meeting serve.
Much of the inspiration comes from TV clichés. A beloved couple wakes up on a Sunday morning and cuddles under a white duvet – a scene known from every Sally Rooney romantic drama. But the duvet goes on forever (a bit like Sally Rooney dramas) and they do not get their way out.
Channel 4’s obsession with nudity is deceived, with a ’21st Century Guide To Sex’ presented by stereotypical sexologists Glenda Leather and Mariella Ricotta.
Some sketches, such as a rendition of the naughty Robin Thicke’s pop videos, are glossy, highly rehearsed productions. Others look like they were scribbled on the back of an envelope.
Emma Appleton (pictured) and Bel Powley can be seen in first-look photos of the BBC adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s best-selling memoir, Everything I Know About Love
A love story: It was announced last year that Dolly’s book would be the inspiration for a seven-part drama about best friends Maggie (Emma) and her best friend Birdy (Bel).
But the program attracts top guest stars, including David Morrissey as a dentist whose surgery is haunting. And the one-off characters are carefully drawn — like the pretentious boyband wannabe who draws: ‘I did not choose music, music chose me. . . and my father is a well-known actor, so I have very good contacts. ‘
BBC3 was also the test site for Everything I Know About Love (BBC1), which is now being broadcast on the main channel. Emma Appleton plays Maggie, a 24-year-old terrible middle-class girl who shares an apartment in London with her best friend from school (the indifferent Birdy, played by Benidorm’s Bel Powley) and works in the media.
It’s meant to be a contemporary version of Bridget Jones’ diary, lamenting how difficult it is for gifted girls to make good choices in the age of dating apps. But it feels painfully literary and staged. The characters are so muted and privileged that it is impossible to worry about any of them.
Jill Halfpenny is great as Maggie’s bitter boss. She’s knee deep in snowflakes – no wonder she’s cynical.