Ernie Wise was a talented and admired comedian, but the last part of his career hangs over showbiz as a warning. During the 15 years that he outlived Eric Morecambe, the sawn-off half of Morecambe & Wise never found a replacement partner.
Being half of a former double-act is the artistic equivalent of widowing: those who loved you as a couple may struggle to adjust to you single or – even worse – with someone new. Sometimes the severance is actually caused by bereavement, and sometimes by unsynchronised retirement: carrying on after Ronnie Barker quit The Two Ronnies on health grounds, Ronnie Corbett remained permanently in work but would always seem to be followed by a shadow.
David Walliams doesn’t obviously have much cause to worry about the current sabbatical from his double-act with Matt Lucas, his partner in Little Britain and Come Fly With Me. On his own, Walliams has become a successful children’s writer for page and stage, and a theatre and TV actor, and talent-show judge.
Yet he seems to feel withdrawal symptoms from collaboration, and over the next six weeks is taking part in a sort of comedic speed-dating. Walliams & Friend is a sketch-show with a different co-star each week, starting with Jack Whitehall, then harnessing Sheridan Smith, Meera Syal, Hugh Bonneville and, most intriguingly, giving one slot each to Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, moonlighting from their own double-act.
Walliams’ desire to be in a new two is surprising because – in the days since Morecambe & Wise and The Two Ronnies – it has become common for comic duos to flourish separately and together in alternation. Dawn French, Stephen Fry, Alexander Armstrong, Victoria Wood, Mel Smith and David Mitchell achieved as high a profile on their own as their erstwhile other halves: Jennifer Saunders, Hugh Laurie, Ben Miller, Julie Walters, Griff Rhys Jones and Robert Webb.
Others have been less lucky, doomed to be seen together or not at all, such as the Chuckle Brothers who, poignantly, turn up in the first Walliams & Friend among the inmates in the reality show Celebrity Slammer. (Mel & Sue and Ant & Dec’s ampersands also have the feel of handcuffs. Perhaps their best hope is to be allowed, one Children in Need or Comic Relief night, to commit TV infidelity as Mel & Dec or Ant & Sue.)
Satire of TV seems to be the show’s main material, regardless of who the emergency colleague is. Enfield plays Gregg Wallace in an extended Masterchef parody, and, more daringly, as HM The Queen in an imagined genealogical documentary Who Does One Think One Is? Syal gets a cop-show spoof as a detective whose interrogation technique is based on the scolding nosiness of a stereotypical Indian mother, and both Whitehall and Smith play contestants in sendups of TV relationship shows.
Such uniformity might suggest that the sketches arise more from the concerns of those creating the scripts (the main writers are Walliams and the Dawson Brothers) than the guests. This increases what is already the biggest risk with the concept of one-off double-acts.
A comedy partnership generally develops over time – earlier pairs tended to have started in music hall, latter ones at university – and to grow from physical contrasts: successful comedy duos tend to have disparities of sight or sound. Ominously for this series, Wood & Walters, Morecambe & Wise and The Two Ronnies were comedy partners who became friends rather than, as here, friends who briefly become comedy partners.
Of the episodes I’ve seen, the opener makes best use of the guest. Whitehall’s frame allows a plausible impersonation of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, who makes unexpectedly filthy deductions in two standout scenes. It also makes use of Whitehall’s knack for playing posh boys in a “Middle-Class Jeremy Kyle show” in which he portrays a son at war with his parents over their cancellation of his annual skiing trip.
This series is probably a gimmick rather than an audition, but Walliams & Whitehall feels the most plausible long-term pair, with the caveat that single-sex comedy combinations may have had their day (they push comedy into drag territory, where it tends to become pantomimic). The weakest sketch in the Whitehall show – in which he uncomfortably imitates urban lingo – also suggests that the future of the sketch show, if it has one, will be in larger and more diverse groups rather than the double-act. The Christmas episode comes close to this, with Walliams and Bonneville joined by Morgana Robinson and Mike Wozniak.
Sketch shows, by their nature, are of variable standard, and this is only amplified if the lineup changes every week. But Walliams & Friend establishes that David Walliams is the comedy equivalent of a tennis star who has the freedom to choose between playing singles or doubles.
• Walliams & Friend starts tonight at 9.30pm on BBC1.
