Review: Solve It Squad

This isn't Scooby-Doo, OK? Los-Angeles funny folks Tin Can Bros bring their totally excellent knock-off parody of the preternaturally clever cartoon teens, Solve it Squad, to the Edinburgh Fringe. They follow in a post-modern comedy tradition of dropping perky TV favourites into the real world. They kill 'Cluebert' the dog, then jump forwards 20 years to reunite the now shambolically adult characters in solving that case but mainly to have a lot of fun. 
  
As they hunt the 'Demonic Apostle' at a hotel run by suspiciously similar-looking staff members (all played by a literally wig-snatching Brian Rosenthal), Corey Lubowich's production riffs lovingly on the TV series it's based on, as well as detective shows. Joey Richter's Shaggy-adjacent Scraggy is now an FBI agent, traumatised by the death of his dog. Lauren Lopez turns jaded eye-rolling into an art as not-Velma Esther, constantly high to negate her whirring super-brain. 
  
It starts sluggishly but takes off when the cast – including a Seth Macfarlane-channelling Gabe Greenspan as train-wreck ex-himbo Keith and Ashley Clements as comeback-seeking TV star Gwen – get to bounce off each other in chaotic fashion. It's delightfully silly and shrewdly observed, spinning our nostalgia for simpler televisual times into a funhouse mirror of today.