Feeling somewhat tired from being woken up repeatedly by an extremely chatty field of sheep in the Lake District, I arrived at Edinburgh Waverly relieved to have finally made it. Then after lunch, picking up my press pass, dropping off my stuff and getting ready to go out again, I discovered I was in fact running twenty minutes late for my first show. Sprinting across the city with my injured knees proved impossible, so we frantically booked an Uber and checked off my first Unexpected Emergency Expense (UEE) of the Fringe, making it to the Pleasance Courtyard with two minutes to spare. After being directed to the correct queue by what I can only assume was one of Stephen Mangan’s children (based on them standing next to Stephen Mangan and looking incredibly like him), we piled into the last spots of the back row feeling distinctly sweaty and stressed.

All this to say, within minutes I’d completely forgotten about this thanks to Just The Two Of Us. This is the debut show from London-based alternative comedy sketch duo Maria Telnikoff and Vidya Divakaran, who perform as Soft Play. They start off as fairy-light adorned stars in front of a sparkly, CD-adorned background at the beginning of the universe, and proceed to introduce us to tales of all the great duos in history. It’s a great set-up, and the sketches come thick and fast, from Romulus and Remus (soundtracked by Shakira’s classic ‘She-Wolf’) to a queer parody of Bend It Like Beckham, with Telnikoff doing a brilliant, trembling-lip Keira Knightley impression.

The show is suffused with the culture of the 2010s, from High School Musical to Tracy Beaker – even a parody of the infamous ‘Mysterious Girl’ X Factor audition. The latter could seem like cheap filler, but the duo are so note-perfect in their impressions that it’s well worth it. A sketch about a pair of German party boys Burt and Ernie (‘ from the straight capital of Europe .. Berlin’) is great fun, as is a parody of revision guide presenters. The pair gurn at the audience during bouncy onstage transitions as they grab new costumes from sparkly onstage baskets, and they create a sense of merry, anarchic chaos that’s great fun. There are a couple of less stellar sketches later on – a song about emails and ‘peas in a podcast’ – which stick out only because they’ve set the bar so high, and perhaps it would’ve been better to go straight to the emotional peak. But the audience are still universally on side as things wrap up, with some genuine dancing ability on display.

There’s a sense that Telnikoff and Divakaran have rehearsed these sketches endlessly, wringing out every comic moment and micro-expression while still retaining amazing silliness and whimsy – and with such radiant chemistry and charisma, they can get away with murder.