Has it really been 16 whole years since a Mitchell and Webb sketch show was last on our screens?
Indeed. It has been almost two decades since the world was introduced to the ‘Are we the baddies’ meme and Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.
Since then, David Mitchell and Robert Webb have gone onto write books, star in panel shows and create an award-winning sitcom (aka Peep Show) – but writing sketches is how the pair first became famous, so what a treat to see them return to the genre all these years later. Especially given that the genre feels like it’s dropped off the face of the earth in the last decade. Who’s making sketches anymore?
Well, these guys are. This time, they’re doing so in the company of a few others: Kiell Smith-Bynoe, best known for his work on the BBC show Ghosts, as well as fellow comics Stevie Martin, Krystal Evans and Lara Ricote. All very good at their jobs; the signs are positive.
And what unfolds is pretty much what you’d expect: six half-hour episodes jam-packed with glorious chaos: some returning bits, some casual one-offs. Whether all of them stick the landing is another thing entirely.
With the early Mitchell and Webb sketches, audiences were treated to something gloriously unhinged – a sense of two guys throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what stuck.
This time around, they’re several decades older and some of the oddness feels like it’s been toned down. The first episode opens with a rather laboured joke about what it must have been like to switch from using chamber pots to flushing toilets, featuring Mitchell in full ranting mode – it’s not that funny, and the heart sinks slightly.
Another segment, called ‘Sweary Aussie Drama’, is amusing the first time, and gets tired the second, third and fourth times. Swear-words crop up with alarming frequency, which hits the mark once or twice, and feels like a cheap bid for laughs after.
Fortunately, there are also zingers lurking amongst the less shiny offerings. A short sketch about a suitcase so amazing it makes people’s heads explode is hilarious, as is a later one that takes aim at the many, many dramatisations of the ill-fated Newsnight/ Prince Andrew interview.
One in the second episode, which features a radio interview that goes drastically downhill, feels like quintessential Mitchell and Webb stuff: oddball and off-balance in the best way. The writing team also make hay out of the pair’s much-increased ages: one scene is set in a fictionalised Channel 4 writers’ room, where the pair have to contend with some rather unflattering word clouds about their online brands (Webb’s says ‘death’; Mitchell’s says… well, I won’t spoil it).
Are there any carry-overs from the previous series? Not really. At one point, the presenter from The Hole in the Ring makes a reappearance as the host of an aftershow for new gameshow Hot Seat and drops the clanger: “the poor man’s Gok Wan... before that phrase ceased to have all relevance.”
It’s a rare slice of the scalpel from a show that feels ever so slightly toothless. It’s good to see them again, but it’s not numberwang.
Streaming now on Channel 4
