If there is one thing that fascinates me about improv and that is how it is portrayed in Television, books and Film. This is becoming more and more apparent in recent years because the comedy art form is sort of in fashion. There are some interesting topics that we can gain from these ways they are displayed so every so often we are going to look at different scenes from different shows and films.

Sometimes you can find inspiration for improv in really random places and today we are going to look at a show that by accident actually created a really interesting idea about the comedy form.

On ITVX, I came across a show called Andy Samberg and Friends which was a comedy showcase from the Just For Laughs Festival in Canada. Throughout the show there are many comedians that are scattered and perform sets throughout and in between there are sections where Andy Samberg performs.

At one part of the show, he decides to do ‘impressions’ of popular celebrities. From listening to the Lonely Island and Seth Myers Podcast, I know for a fact that Andy knows that he is not good at many celebrity impressions and that is what makes this little skit really interesting. He knows that he is bad with impressions, the audience knows that he is bad at impressions but he makes them believe that he is good and that what he is doing is ‘great’ when actually, it is pretty obvious it is not.

This is a great takeaway for improv – if you believe that something is true in a scene then no matter show silly it is, the audience will believe it as well.

That is the magic of this skit and the fact that the impressions of Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt are awful but the audience laugh because he makes them believe they are amazing.

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