Comedians are an iconoclastic bunch — except when it comes to careers. Rather like 1970s rockers, they seem to feel that success can only be earned by the paying of certain comedy dues. Anyone who races to the top without being booed off by drunks is somehow suspect. Which is why old stand-ups are likely to be furious with the Hollow Men. This four-strong sketch troupe has just managed to land a successful series on American television within five years of leaving college — and they haven’t even had a programme on British radio yet.

The Hollow Men’s six-part television debut is into its fourth week on Comedy Central, the US cable station that carries the increasingly famous satirical series, The Daily Show. Reviewers have been equally charmed and annoyed by the series, with some hefty internet chatter by the more jingoistic fans, bemoaning the buying of British programmes. In fact, Comedy Central commissioned and paid for the entire series.

“We did our fourth Edinburgh Fringe in 2002 and, on the final night, we were all hungover and bored, so we swapped parts,” says Hollow Man Rupert Russell. “It was the worst performance we had ever done. This guy came backstage and said he was from NBC, and we all thought, ‘Oh, no.’ But he said, ‘Your experimental comedy — I really like the way you don’t remember your lines and laugh at each other.’”

NBC whisked them to New York for three live shows, where they were spotted by bookers for the US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, where in turn they were spotted by Comedy Central. “It was weird,” says David Armand. “We were playing the Hen & Chickens club, went to Aspen (where hotels comped us breakfast because we were hot), filmed our show and then came back to Britain and did a gig at the Hen & Chickens. From a room above a London pub to Hollywood, and back to a room above a London pub.”

The foursome of twentysomethings — Armand, Russell, Sam Spedding, Nick Tanner — met, as is the established way, at Cambridge. Russell claims he won the other three members’ souls in a game of Boggle and forced them to form a sketch troupe. Spedding says it was because they didn’t get into Footlights. Either way, they found they were mutually inspired by Vic Reeves, Absolutely and Alexei Sayle’s Stuff, so got together to write and perform. After graduating, they started the usual sketch-show hopefuls’ life of day jobs, comedy clubs in pubs, bit parts in Casualty and the odd bit of scriptwriting, until NBC came knocking.

For British viewers, their influences do filter through. Sketches such as one at a job centre where an applicant finds he is ideally suited to become the king of Spain, or another featuring an illness that forces young men to imitate Marlon Brando, fit firmly within the surreal traditions of British comedy. In an America relatively starved of sketch shows, however, they represent something new. The comparisons most reviewers have found are with Monty Python.

“Over here, writers keep referencing Seinfeld or The Simpsons,” says Tanner, “but in the States those are mainstream. It’s hip to talk about Monty Python or BBC America comedies, so we’ve been hugely helped by that.” In fact, the Hollow Men is the third British or British- inspired show to open on American television in the past month. March saw debuts for both the US remake of The Office and the reworked ITV Sketch Show, which stars Kelsey Grammer and Lee Mack. The ratings performance for all three has been patchy. The Office and the Sketch Show opened well and have since dipped, while the Hollow Men is building steadily but from a relatively low base. In general, however, the critics have been won over by our crazy limey humour.

“I think, in part, this is down to repeated failure by American networks to replace some of the golden sitcoms of the past 10 years,” says Jon Thoday, managing director of Sketch Show producer, Avalon. “You’ve also seen British writers pick up on American styles after years of Cheers and Frasier. And British formats like Pop Idol and Millionaire have done well in America, which has made them take our telly more seriously.” Thoday believes it will be a while before a Brit-com tops the ratings, but in the meantime, the fledgling interest has meant the Hollow Men can kick off their broadcasting career with the kind of budgets BBC3 and E4 can only dream of. “Though it was tight in American terms,” Russell says. “The show has a slightly retro look because we couldn’t afford to build our own sets. We went to this huge aircraft-hangar-sized set graveyard, filled with stuff from NYPD Blue and the People’s Court, which was really cheap to hire. It’s like being in a weird doll’s house, with an old security guard who sits having his lunch in the judge’s chair.”

As for the name, yes, it is from TS Eliot’s 1925 poem. “We had to think of a name for the first show, which was about men and masculinity, and it kind of stuck,” Spedding explains. “It does make us seem more enigmatic and intelligent. The advantage of the US show is that we’ve really upped our position on Google. Now our ambition is to tip Eliot off the first three pages. He’s just not consistently funny. Cats is great, but his later punch lines tend to end with a whimper rather than a bang.” The others groan, and he giggles. “You know what? I haven’t even read the poem.”