I have been following Jenny Slate’s disquieting web series, Catherine – A Story In 12 Parts and it has left me oddly hypnotised and scared. As of today there are three episodes left to go and with the release of each episode so far a creeping sense of foreboding has been consuming me – although it is impossible for me to tell you precisely why.

Jenny is an actress and comedienne who has hopped from job to job over the years. She had a one year stint with Saturday Night Live during the 2009 – 2010 season, is one half of the comedy duo Gabe and Jenny (with Gabe Liedman), has made many guest appearances on TV shows such as Parks and Recreation, and Bobs Burgers, and has a recurring role in the Comedy Central sketch series, the Kroll Show.

In the online world she is probably best known for the 2010 unexpected stop-motion viral hit, Marcel The Shell With Shoes On – about a shy shoes wearing seashell, which she wrote and voiced. Marcel currently has over 21 million views and was so popular that the eponymous shell returned for another outing in 2011 (which itself has over 6 million views).

Although Slate is currently working on the script for a Loony Tunes reboot movie, as well as potentially turning Marcel into a movie, she has found time to create Catherine (directed and co-written by her husband, Dean Fleischer-Camp). The show debuted on the YouTube comedy channel, JASH last month (under their ‘buh’ sub-channel) and came about because JASH wanted to work with Fleischer-Camp and Slate, asking them to put together something a little unusual. It actually debuted as part of the YouTube Comedy Week but went virtually unnoticed at the time (not unlike the YouTube Comedy Week itself. BURN!)

It’s very hard to put a finger on why Catherine is funny, because it kinda isn’t: but intentionally isn’t. There is literally nothing to laugh at, and yet the sheer lack of humour is oddly funny in itself. The set up involves Slate, as Catherine, returning to office based work and interacting with her colleagues. Every conversation is hyper-normal and dull, but something about the pitch perfect polite speech of every character and the total lack of conflict is making for an increasingly worrying plot.

Each episode is super short (only 2 – 3 minutes) and virtually nothing happens every time, but with only three episodes left to go I am on the edge of my seat to find out exactly what is going on in this too perfect world Slate has created. What are all the close-ups of food about? Why was Catherine hesitant to take over lunch ordering duties? Why was she off work in the first place?

I’ll come back with a full review when the show has wrapped but believe me when I say the complete banality of Catherine has me chewing my fist in anticipation for the (probably ‘non’ explosive) finale. I don’t want to pre-empt matters, but it’s just gotta end in a violent bloodbath, right? RIGHT?!

Here is Episode 1 of Catherine – but believe me you need to watch every episode in one go. It will only take around 20 minutes and I want other people to share in my hair-pulling tension.