When I Think You Should Leave debuted in 2019, it hit like a lightning bolt. Unless you came to it pre-armed with a working knowledge of minor, short-lived stars of Saturday Night Live from a decade ago, the arrival of Tim Robinson felt like the very best sort of surprise.
As the co-creator and lead actor of the series, Robinson’s comedy exploded at you from a million different angles. He’d made a sketch show, but one that deliberately avoided the genre’s traditional premise-escalation-conclusion structure in favour of freeform absurdism. From the second sketch – a compensation lawyer infomercial for a specific plumbing incident that leaves Robinson in pulsating fits of uncomprehending rage – it became clear that I Think You Should Leave was going to deal with a number of unfamiliar patterns.
