One series, 2011. Sitcom-cum-variety show, set backstage at a theatre; Dick & Dom play Dick and Dom, who run a comedy gig called Dick and Dom's Funny Business; all the scenes are set either in the green room, the theatre office, or on the stage (the Studio Audience play the theatre audience.) Other recurring characters are Kelly-Anne, the theatre owner's daughter, who has a crush on Dom; the usherettes; and two terrible would-be wrestlers who carry out a long-distance feud with Dick & Dom via video messages.
The acts who appear in the show-within-the-show are actual up-and-coming sketch troupes like Pappy's and the Penny Dreadfuls.
Every episode features a foolish scheme on the part of either Dick or Dom, and a special guest who must absolutely not hear of the shenanigans... Hilarity Ensues. Many, many homages and ShoutOuts to famous comedy routines and tropes- some of them contained in a History of funny business segment, which follows the Monty Python stage show lecture on the history of custard pies format, with Subject A (Dick) and Subject B (Dom) demonstrating slapstick routines while a voiceover explains the gag.
Tropes used in the show:
- Amusing Injuries: mostly but not all in the History of Funny Business segment, caused by a Plank Gag, Banana Peel, Rake Take or The Pratfall. Kelly-Anne delivers the odd Armor-Piercing Slap, too.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Dick dresses as his twin sister, Dixie, in one episode; the special guest promptly falls in love with her. (Dick rather misses his sister at the end of the episode, so Dom dresses up as another sister to console him.)
- Bottle Episode: Bottle series, in fact.
- Candid Camera Prank (Phone Scam version): One of their guests is an impressionist, and phones them up in character as Davina Mc Call to catch them out in one of their schemes.
- Caption Humor: done by holding up signs
- Chekhov's Gun: It's fairly obvious when a bunch of mousetraps are introduced that someone will end up snapped...
- Clip Show: The last three episiodes of thirteen. There's a reasonable amount of original material in them, what with the frame stories (and some of the clips shown weren't included in the original episodes).
- The Ditz: Kelly-Anne
- Disguised in Drag: Dick, as Dom's wife Dixie.
- Dumb Muscle: The Devastation Brothers. Not actually that muscly.
- Easy Amnesia: Dom loses his memory of how to put on a show and has to be reminded, in clip-show format.
- Hard Head
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: The hosts (on- and off-screen)
- Homage: To many famous comedy moments- for example, the Adam and Joe Toy Movies.
- Improv The rap improvsers, Abandoman, end each show.
- Instant Home Delivery
- Lampshade Hanging (You know I've always wanted to work for the Queen? Have you? I must have done, otherwise this week's plot makes no sense.)
- Medium Awareness
- Merit Badges for Everything: The Cubs sketches- there is a Building A Starship badge and a Cleaning My House badge, among others.
- Mistaken for Gay: Kelly-Anne, passing garbled messages between the boys when they're not speaking, manages to conclude that they are in love.
- Mouse Trap: Warwick Davies manages to get caught in about twenty of them.
- New Job Episode: Dick becomes a lackey to the Queen.
- No Fourth Wall
- Once per Episode: several running gags work on this- a book falls on Dom's head, Dick mentions a forbidden topic to the guest
- Reality Show (a parody)
- Reverse Psychology Backfire
- Running Gag: Each episode has one, and there are also ones running all the way through, like a book falling on Dom's head.
- Saving the Orphanage: Raising money to save Funny Business from being closed down by the theatre owner.
- Sink-or-Swim Fatherhood: The first episode- a baby is left on their doorstep.
- Slapstick
- Special Guest: Every week.
- Stereo Fibbing
- Studio Audience
- Sue Donym I'm Dick... sie. Dixie.
- Take That!: The first episode features Madonna's arm, as a gnarled, clawed thing grabbing for a baby.
- Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him
- Triang Relations: type 5
- Toilet Humor
- 2-for-1 Show