Funny business at the office

Mike Mullet and Liam Brady (not the footballer) are the Ideas Men in question. They sit at a big blue table, thinking things up for their nameless, functionless company.

Curtain-haired Liam ponders when to eat his bap. Gawky Mike sounds off about how society squashes true creativity. Liam might be impressed if he wasn’t so busy making himself a Lego hat.

Woods and Hough summon up the suffocating reek of codified creativity. Their show ticks many of the same boxes as other business satires — motivational
speaking, executive toys and spurious acronyms all line up for a kicking.

But the duo’s ability to set such rigidity alongside the ever-weird workings of the human heart gives Ideas Men fresh resonance.

As the working day lumbers on, the office culture grows stranger and the show grows richer. Liam morphs into their stern boss, John McLaughlin (not the jazz-fusion guitar great). The whole world becomes a giant role-playing session.

There are good jokes, beautifully played by a duo who have worked together for 10 years now. Their dialogue offers a brisk bleakness that lifts the lid on Mike and Liam’s suburban aspirations.

But your willingness to allow the show its longueurs rests on whether you
share its writer-performers’ fascination with the mystery of invention. This 70-minute show is about ideas more than characters.

But its rough-edged sense of play offers a lingering suggestion of the
place between order and chaos where all good ideas come from.

Ideas Men