COMEDIANS David Mitchell and Robert Webb are back with a new sketch show for the first time in 15 years – and this time they have “pompous” lefties and lazy TV streamers in their sights.
The duo’s hit BBC show That Mitchell And Webb Look, which ran from 2006 to 2010, featured a deft blend of silly skits and send-ups with a satirical edge.
Robert Webb and David Mitchell are back with a new sketch show[/caption]
The duo as flatmates Mark and Jez in a 2003 episode of Peep Show[/caption]
Krystal Evans alongside David and Robert on Mitchell And Webb Are Not Helping[/caption]
Now the pair from cult sitcoms Peep Show and Back are reunited again on Mitchell And Webb Are Not Helping, which kicks off tomorrow night on Channel 4.
But the fact the show got to air at all is a miracle, they suggest, as the sketch show format was dead.
Comedy-dramas such as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag had eaten up all the budgets while silly and funny shows fell by the wayside.
David said: “The whole genre of sketch comedy seemed to absolutely collapse.
“There have been times in the past where not many sketch shows have been made, but I think this is the first time in television history where it’s gone, as far as I can tell, to zero, so we gave up hoping.”
‘Hopefully Emily won’t be hopping mad’
Fortunately, where the BBC failed to go, Channel 4 got out its cheque book.
David added: “The BBC never said never to another sketch show, but they also never said yes.
“So we went off and did other things, but we still had that hope in mind.”
He also blames the increasing costs of making comedy — even though in reality it is cheaper than drama.
The pair have had success on TV in the intervening years — David is a team captain on panel show Would I Lie To You, while Robert was on Strictly in 2021 before bowing out due to health concerns — and both have written best-selling books.
Yet they had always yearned to do sketches together again — and with a new generation of fans discovering their work online, the timing is perfect.
David, who is married to television presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, said: “Whenever I want to remind myself of a sketch, I look it up on YouTube, and it’s usually had 12 million views or something.
“All you want to do with comedy is reach people, so that’s great.”
Their previous sketches often go viral on social media and have a huge resurgence whenever they are relevant to a news story.
Most famous is the “Are we the baddies?” sketch, where the pair play Nazis who realise that with their uniforms depicting skulls, perhaps they are fighting the wrong corner.
Robert said: “I’m glad it speaks to people at different times and in different situations.
“It’s about the banality of evil, in a way, but it’s also about hats.
“I mean, on one level, it’s a very silly sketch.
“We both came up with the idea, and I remember watching war films when I was a kid and thinking, ‘When Herr Flick in ’Allo ’Allo looks at his uniform, does he even know what he looks like?’ and it evolved from there into this sketch that has relevance in all sorts of political situations.
David with wife Victoria at a party in 2023[/caption]
“The other one that came back after many years was ‘Remain indoors’.”
Robert is referring to the sketches set in a quiz show after a mystery event has wiped out most of the population.
He added: “There was a moment during the pandemic where I kept seeing ‘remain indoors’ and I sort of thought, ‘Do I really want to be associated with the horrible epidemic going on?’.”
In the new series, one of their best and edgiest pieces is based on the 2019 Prince Andrew interview by journalist Emily Maitlis, in which she grilled him about his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The pair take a swing at the fact both Netflix and Amazon Prime made separate dramas based on the interview, with Billie Piper and Gillian Anderson starring in the Netflix version and Michael Sheen in the Prime drama.
Robert explains why they wanted to take a pop at the shows, saying: “Self-importance in journalism is always funny.
We definitely need to keep having things that aren’t trying to do anything at all apart from being funny at the expense of everything else.
David Mitchell
“We find it funny to laugh at things that are close to us, and that’s probably why we like to have more fun at the expense of liberals than we do conservatives, because we are liberals and we find the nonsense within our own tribe more interesting.
“It can just become so intensely pompous, and that amuses me.
“Hopefully Emily won’t be hopping mad.
“I don’t think she will be.”
In the sketch, both David and Robert play Prince Andrew, while a voiceover takes a swing at the streamers and their lack of originality in programme making.
Describing the original Newsnight interview in his voiceover, David said: “The people of Britain got to have a huge guilt-free laugh about a posh t**t destroying his life in front of millions.
“It was such a massive deal that the story of how it was achieved had to be told in a drama almost immediately afterwards.
“But that wasn’t the end of it, because then another channel made another drama about almost exactly the same thing.
Plenty of silliness
“Because what’s the alternative — make up a new drama? I don’t think so. That doesn’t work.
“Everything has got to be based on a true story, or a remake, otherwise it will lose money.”
Robert, playing an Amazon exec, then says: “We can use some of the money we made destroying the High Street”, while Ghosts star Kiell Smith-Bynoe, portraying a Netflix boss, references royal drama The Crown by saying: “We can use some of the money we made televising Princess Diana’s bulimia.”
For all the punchy and political sketches, though, there is plenty of silliness in the new series.
The pair are joined by four up-and-coming comedians — Smith-Bynoe, Taskmaster’s Stevie Martin, and stand-ups Krystal Evans and Lara Ricote — for daft sketches including the self- explanatory Sweary Aussie Drama, and another, which has Robert and Stevie playing members of Abba in outlandish Seventies outfits.
Rob as Nazi in ‘are we the baddies?’ sketch which became an online hit[/caption]
The pair have made four TV shows together[/caption]
David, who had a recent hit with the Bafta-nominated Ludwig, about a puzzle solver who turns detective, admits he would love to see more daft comedy on TV — and it is “unfair” that telly chiefs are so rarely willing to spend money on having a laugh.
He said: “I say this as someone who’s in a comedy-drama which I’m very proud of, and which is hopefully funny in places, but it’s not primarily funny.
“It’s primarily a mystery, and that’s great.
“But we definitely need to keep having things that aren’t trying to do anything at all apart from being funny at the expense of everything else.
“Obviously if you are making a programme set in a war and you need 300 horses, I accept that’s more likely to happen in a drama than in a sitcom and so you need more money for that.
“But broadly, both genres involve people talking in rooms, and you have to make that work for half the price in comedy, which is obviously self- evidently unfair.”
- Mitchell And Webb Are Not Helping begins on Channel 4 tomorrow at 10pm.
