The Adam and Joe Show is a British television sketch comedy show that originally ran from 6 December 1996 to 28 May 1999 on Channel 4 for the first three series and then moved to E4 from 13 March to 17 April 2001 for the fourth and final series.
Origin and format
Adam and Joe first appeared on Channel 4 show Takeover TV in 1995, with Adam presenting alone at first and Joe joining him as the series progressed. Following this they created The Adam and Joe Show for the same channel. Unusually for a comedy programme, the show was commissioned by Channel 4's head of religious programming, Peter Grimsdale: according to Cornish, "The remit for religion at 4 was to do with personal belief and personal expression, and somehow we came under that banner: it was almost like pop culture was our religion".
The show took the form of short, condensed sketches interspersed with links filmed in what was purportedly Adam and Joe's bedsit, but was actually a shared "performance space" above a branch of The Body Shop in Brixton, South London. When in this room, Adam wore a plain black T-shirt with 'Ad' and Joe wore one with 'Joe' written on the front. Although the two comedians were involved in other projects before and after it was aired, The Adam and Joe Show remains their most popular and well-known creation, and it gained a cult following.
Memorable sketches
Toymovies
Each week, Adam and Joe would re-create a popular current feature film using stuffed toys and elaborate cardboard sets. These "Toymovies" condensed the story, look and action of each film into a couple of minutes. The most memorable included spoofs of Titanic (Toytanic), Showgirls (Showtoys), The English Patient (The Toy Patient), Saving Private Ryan (Saving Private Lion), American Beauty (American Beautoy), Shine (Shiney), Shakespeare in Love (Shakesbeare in Love), Fight Club (Tufty Club) and Trainspotting (Toytrainspotting), as well as television shows including Friends (Furends), Ally McBeal (Ally McSqueal) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Stuffed Trek: The Toy Generation). According to Cornish, the amount of work involved in creating these sketches led Adam and Joe to work on them individually to avoid arguments, resulting in a rivalry with each attempting to upstage the other with ever-more elaborate sketches, as Joe explained: "I remember doing The English Patient and going to massive lengths to make a plane and a desert with sand dunes shaped like teddy bears. Adam was jealous and went: 'Right, I'm going to do something even better'. It ended up with me making a Titanic the length of a room to try and completely crush him".