I like comedy with ambition, and saving the world is as ambitious as it gets. Such is the goal that John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman have teamed up to achieve. If the news pages this morning suggest that they've failed, that may be because the duo don't apply any great passion to their task. Their stock-in-trade is the kind of urbane wit that we associate with their regular employer, Radio 4. You sense that they'd treat Armageddon and Nirvana with the same arched eyebrow. But their jokes are as intelligent as they come.
Oliver and Zaltzman are better writers than performers, and their tag-team relationship here can seem slightly stilted. But there are some expressive set pieces. I may not agree that public opinion is as rightwing as they portray it, but Zaltzman ruthlessly spoofs the kind of politician who adapts his speech, phrase by phrase, to reflect the vox populi.
There's a persuasive simplicity, too, to the advice Oliver and Zaltzman finally offer to those engaged in the petty conflicts afflicting the world. "It was ages ago!" says Zaltzman. "Whatever it was, it was fucking ages ago!"
· Until August 30. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
