From left to right: Alexander Jeremy, Sam Russell, Luke Manning, and Tom Mayo AKA Shoot From The Hip
Shoot From The Hip is a British improvised comedy group composed of Tom Mayo, Sam Russell-Holmes, Alexander "AJ" Jeremy, and Luke Manning. The four met and began performing together in 2011 while in university, rising to fame in 2022 after uploading a clip of one of their shows to TikTok. They are currently based primarily in London.Shoot From The Hip shows are two-act performances wherein the first act is composed entirely of improv games and the second act is a fully-improvised longform play. The group bases all of their scenes off of Audience Participation, with the actors taking suggestions from the audience for aspects of the story such as the relationship between characters, the setting, the genre of the scene, the title of their longforms, or the opening line of dialogue. Shoot From The Hip also does live streams from their homes that follow the same format as their live shows, taking prompts from the chat.
The group currently has over 1.6 million TikTok followers and 300k subscribers on Youtube. They also have a Patreon on which they live stream their shows and post behind-the-scenes content.
Tropes Associated with Shoot From The Hip
- Acting for Two: Out of necessity, since four men play all the characters in Shoot From The Hip shows. Sometimes results in an actor needing to switch roles mid-scene.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: All of their live streams from home are essentially this, with fans being able to force all of them to take a shot at any point of the livestream by donating to their Ko-Fi page. They also jokingly encourage their audiences to drink during intermission, since "the more you drink during intermission, the funnier the second half will be".
- Baldness Mockery: Played for laughs at AJ's expense, sometimes in the form of Self-Deprecation.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: In the 'Losing your virginity' time warp game.Sam: The time he almost did it once.Tom: Baaaaaaa!AJ: Oh, no!
- Big Beautiful Man: Sam (formerly). By his own admission, he has gained, then lost, than gained, then lost significant amounts of weight over the years. Fans seem to find him attractive at any size, though.
- Bilingual Bonus: AJ and Luke are proficient in French and Spanish respectively, which comes in handy during Genre Roulette games where the genre is "telenovela" and Translator games where the suggested languages are one of those two. It also has the added plus of making Sam and Tom's poor attempts at mimicking these languages even funnier.
- British Humour: All four members of Shoot From The Hip are British, so this is fairly predictable. They don't shy away from Gallows Humor, it's not unusual for them to mock the monarchy, Double Entendre and innuendo abound, all of them are Sir Swears-a-Lot, and Sam in particular sometimes becomes the Deadpan Snarker.
- Coconut Superpowers: Due to the improvised nature of Shoot From The Hip shows, actual special effects are nonexistent and the actors have to find other ways to indicate that magic and other fantasy elements are in play. For instance, to indicate that a flashback sequence is about to happen, the actor(s) will usually just spin around in circles with their arms in the air and repeat whatever phrase triggered the flashback to simulate a Fade Out.
- Cross-Cast Role: Out of necessity, since all four Shoot From The Hip actors are male. Of the four, Luke is best known for playing the most convincing female characters.
- Death as Comedy: Rarely are character deaths in Shoot From The Hip shows Played Straight or Played for Drama. The notable exceptions are the death of Jeremiah in "Inside the Mysterious Cube" and the death of Amanda in "Lost in Your Eyes" – though even these scenes have funny elements.
- Fake Nationality: All the actors are quite proficient in using other accents and dialects when it fits the character – most commonly Fake American (usually Southern), Fake Irish, or Fake Scot. In the Translator game, Fake Russian (or Northern European) shows up a lot.
- Genre Roulette: The concept of the Genre game, wherein two actors start a scene, then change the genre based on suggestions from the audience.
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Ho Yay: Due to the fact that the performers don't shy away from kissing or otherwise showing physical or verbal affection on stage when the plot calls for it (or sometimes when it doesn't), fans see a lot of this – specifically between Luke and Sam. - Iconic Outfit: The members have revealed that when their content became popular, they decided to assign themselves Shoot From The Hip "uniforms" to wear on stage: Tom wears dark blues and greens, AJ wears black and white, Luke wears colorful patterned shirts, and Sam wears his iconic red flannels.
- Improv: The genre of comedy that Shoot From The Hip performs. All of their shows are completely improvised from start to finish.
- LGBT Fanbase: Maybe it's the abundant Ho Yay between the actors, or the fact that the group doesn't shy away from portraying genuinely heartfelt depictions of queer characters and relationships. Maybe it's just that All Gays Love Theatre. Whatever the appeal, Shoot From The Hip seems to attract a lot of queer fans. If they're not this, they might be part of the Estrogen Brigade.
- Minimalist Cast: Except on the rare occasions when they bring on a special guest, Shoot From The Hip is composed entirely of Tom, AJ, Luke, and Sam. Luke is also frequently absent from shows because he lives in Spain, narrowing the cast down to three.
- Mr. Exposition: Shoot From The Hip's content is completely improvised – except for Sam's beginning-of-show Infodump that, among other things, introduces the concept of improvised comedy to audience members who may be unfamiliar with it, warms up the audience for Audience Participation, and is almost always exactly the same, regardless of what the audience does or says.
- Rule of Funny: As with most improvised comedy, Shoot From The Hip actors generally roll with whatever their scene partner suggests so long as it's funny. This has led to some truly nonsensical plot lines such as a couple's chinchilla secretly being a Nazi or a woman getting murdered by octopus paella.
- Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: The concept of the Translator game, wherein one actor gives a speech in a language they don't speak (i.e., gibberish) and another "translates" what they're saying. Since the game often revolves around an expert teaching an animal to play a sport, it can also extend to the expert suddenly being able to speak to that animal.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Frequently Played for Laughs by Sam, then mercilessly Parodied, Discussed (and inevitably mocked), or Subverted (or even Double Subverted) by the other actors.
- Time Master: The Concept of the Time Warp game, where two actors begin a scene and another controls the flow of time in that scene. The actors must flash back or flash forward in time as needed to show what happened "five seconds ago", "ten years from now", or "at the beginning of that train of logic".
Shoot From The Hip's Improvised Longform Plays
- Caesar & Juliet
- The Mystery of The Midnight Circus
- Pricilla's Final Petal
- Susan's Holiday
- The Evil Make-A-Wish Kid
- Beetroots & Murder
- The Milkman
- The Neighbor's Under The Bed
- The Leftenmost Window
- The Prime Minister's First Day
- The Excited Chinchilla
- The Ingredients
- The Cardboard Stegosaurus
- Wild, Wet, & Worrisome
- No! I Always Loved That Caravan!
- All Eyes on Nigel
- BUS
- Inside The Mysterious Cube
- The Midnight Mystery
- Once Upon A Time, I Killed Mum
- The Hare Who Wore A Sweater
- The Oopsie Daisy Bulge
- Too Big To Be a Jockey
- Long John's - STRIKE!
- The Dark Moons of Slough
- Lost In Your Eyes
- The Meringue Haberdashery
- Oh My God, Is This A Joke?
