That Mitchell and Webb Look
That Mitchell and Webb Look | |
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Also known as | Mitchell & Webb |
Genre | Sketch comedy |
Written by |
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Directed by |
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Starring |
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Opening theme | "Alive & Amplified" by The Mooney Suzuki |
Composers | Richie Webb Matt Katz |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of series | 4 |
No. of episodes | 24 |
Production | |
Executive producers | Kenton Allen Mark Freeland Jon Plowman Paul Schlesinger |
Producer | Gareth Edwards |
Cinematography | Rob Kitzmann John Sorapure |
Editors | Pete Drinkwater Scott Flyger Gary Hewson |
Running time | 30 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | BBC Two BBC HD (2008–2010) |
Release | 14 September 2006 17 August 2010 | –
Related | |
The Mitchell and Webb Situation That Mitchell and Webb Sound |
That Mitchell and Webb Look is a British
As well as
First aired on 14 September 2006,[2] a second series was commissioned later that same year[3] and was broadcast between 21 February and 27 March 2008.[4] The third series began on 11 June 2009.[5] Since the second series, the production has also been broadcast on BBC HD. The first series won a BAFTA award in 2007. The third series began airing on BBC America on 14 April 2010. The fourth series premiered on BBC Two and BBC HD on 13 July 2010 with a total of six episodes commissioned by the BBC.[6] In a November 2011 interview, Webb stated that there were no plans for another series and added that "you'd have to ask the BBC" about further series.[7]
Recurring sketches
That Mitchell and Webb Look includes recurring sketches, or sketches with recurring themes. Some of those that feature in multiple episodes include:
- Numberwang: A "maths quiz" game show in which two contestants, Simon and Julie (Paterson Joseph and Olivia Colman), call out numbers until the host (Webb) declares "That's Numberwang." The rules of the game are left completely unexplained to the viewer, and appear to follow no logic whatsoever, to the point that sometimes the gameplay even seems to contradict itself. What Numberwang actually means is never revealed.[8]
- Ted and Peter: a pair of alcoholic, chain-smoking snooker commentators and retired players. Ted Wilkes is played by David Mitchell and Peter DeCoursey by Robert Webb. They tell insensitive stories about the (generally fictional) players, bringing up things such as one player's attempts at suicide and another's sexuality, rather than focusing on the game (other than Ted's occasional comment of "Oh and that's a bad miss!"). They also drink heavily throughout the sketch. By Series 4, the commentating careers of Ted and Peter have taken a downward turn, being forced to commentate on Late Night Dog Poker on Dave.
- The Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar: a drunken, drug-addled homeless man (Webb), who is under the delusion that he is a brilliant and intrepid detective or adventurer, dressed in a manner reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. He and his companion Ginger (Mitchell) commit various crimes whilst supposedly engaging in battle against the henchmen of their so-called "nemesis". SnorriCam is used in parts of the sketches.[9]
- The Quiz Broadcast: a post-apocalyptic television quiz show hosted by Mitchell (who repeatedly reminds viewers to "remain indoors") and transmitted by the British Emergency Broadcasting System in an underground bunker. The show is being aired in the immediate years after "The Event", an unexplained disaster that left most of the human race dead and with little memory of the world pre-Event. The sickly contestants on the show are survivors "trying to enjoy themselves" whilst avoiding any traumatic memories of "the Event", while witnessing a rapid decline in sanitation and fuel.[10]
- Get Me Hennimore!: a parody of 1970s sitcoms, each episode featuring the nervous Hennimore (Webb) being given two important tasks by his boss (Mitchell), which are easy to confuse: for instance, they may be based on two organisations with identical initials. The sketches always end with Hennimore mixing the tasks up and the boss shouting "Hennimore!" angrily and his glasses gratuitously breaking.
Production
The show follows on from the duo's earlier TV series
A pilot for the show was filmed on 27 January 2006 at
Following the first series, the pair went on a tour of 44 UK venues between October and December 2006, entitled The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb, featuring many of the same sketches as That Mitchell and Webb Look.
A preview night for the second series was held on 18 May 2007 at The Drill Hall in London. This series was shot in high-definition[13] on location during June/July 2007 and three studio recordings with an audience were held at TC8 in Television Centre on 3, 10 and 17 August 2007.
Two preview nights for series three were announced on 30 June 2008 on the BBC Tickets website; all tickets were booked in less than 24 hours. The first preview night took place on 13 July 2008 at The Drill Hall, with the second held there on 10 August 2008. Two audience recording sessions at Television Centre – with additional live sketches – were announced on 3 October 2008, and took place on 31 October and 7 November 2008, again in high-definition in studio TC8. A third recording session at the BBC Radio Theatre was announced on 10 October 2008, taking place on 18 November 2008.
A preview night for the fourth series was announced on 18 November 2009 on the BBC Tickets website; this was held on 26 November 2009 at The Drill Hall.
Podcast
In a 2020 episode of the podcast Rule of Three, David Mitchell, Jason Hazeley and Jonathan Dryden-Taylor discussed several of the series four sketches. The series had a bleaker tone, contributing factors potentially including the public mood in the aftermath of the
A series of sketches labelled "After the Event" or "Post-Apocalyptic Gameshow", later to be known as "Remain Indoors", featured in three series three episodes and each of the six series four episodes. The last six episodes were devised in the writers' room and then written by Mitchell, Hazeley, Dryden-Taylor and Joel Morris, who divided into pairs and wrote three episodes apiece. Though Mitchell said he was uncomfortable with it in 2020, reference is made in the sketches to all the children having died in the apocalypse, an idea independently conceived by both pairs of writers.[14]
Mitchell's character's suit becomes increasingly damaged throughout the episodes. The character Sheila seems to believe that society will return to normal if people continue practising pre-Event routines in a ritualistic fashion, such as producing
Another sketch about a spaceship employee who returns from a sick day to find all of his colleagues involved in a religion referencing a deity called "Vectron" was taken from an occurrence during the writing process. During a break, several of the writers were playing with a ball and one began shouting "By Vectron!" in the style of the Galaxy Quest catchphrase "By Grabthar's Hammer!" Another writer returned from the bathroom to find the writers making many references to the unknown entity Vectron.[14]
Reception
The show was nominated for two
A scene on the show during which Mitchell and Webb portrayed SS officers and one asked "Hans, are we the baddies?" later became a popular Internet meme in the early 2020s.[18][19][20][21]
The recurring Quiz Broadcast sketch in the third and fourth seasons, with the recurring opening line "Hello, good evening, and remain indoors!", was widely referenced in early 2020 when social distancing measures were introduced to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.[22][23]
DVD release
All four series of the show have been released on DVD, all released through different distributors under license from the BBC.
The first series was released on DVD in the UK by Contender Home Entertainment on 29 October 2007. Extras include Outtakes, Behind the Scenes footage and a Mitchell & Webb documentary.[24]
The second series was released on DVD in the UK by
The third series was released on DVD in the UK by
The fourth series was released in the UK by
Worldwide broadcast
Region | Channel |
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Arab League | ShowComedy |
Argentina | Film&Arts/i-Sat |
Brazil | Film&Arts |
Australia | ABC2 / UKTV
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Belgium | Canvas
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Colombia | Film&Arts |
Denmark | DR2 |
Finland | Sub
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Iceland | Stöð 2 |
India | BBC Entertainment |
Israel | yes Comedy |
Netherlands | Nederland 3 |
New Zealand | UKTV |
Norway | NRK3 |
Singapore | StarHub Cable Vision |
South Africa | BBC Entertainment |
Sweden | TV4 Komedi |
United Kingdom | |
United States | BBC America[29] / Hulu / Netflix |
References
- ^ a b Guide, British Comedy. "That Mitchell And Webb Look - BBC2 Sketch Show". British Comedy Guide.
- ^ a b Mitchell, Ben (27 August 2006). "Masters of comedy". The Observer. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
- ^ Ross, Deborah (18 November 2006). "Peep Show's David Mitchell and Robert Webb". The Independent. Archived from the original on 1 October 2007. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
- ^ "BBC Week 8 Unplaced 2008". BBC Press Office. Archived from the original on 5 February 2008. Retrieved 8 February 2008.
- ^ Saffron Walden (3 June 2009). "That Mitchell and Webb Look". The Saffron Walden Reporter. Retrieved 6 July 2009.
- ^ "BBC That Mitchell and Webb Look: Series 4 episodes". BBC. Retrieved 7 July 2010.
- ^ Nissim, Mayer (14 November 2011). "Robert Webb interview: 'We'll do Peep Show for as long as they let us'". Digital Spy. Retrieved 24 November 2011.
- ^ "BBC - Comedy - That Mitchell And Webb Site - Numberwang". BBC. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
- ^ "Comedy > That Mitchell and Webb Site > Characters". BBC. 24 September 2014. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
- ^ "A Look Back at the 'After the Event' Sketches". 26 March 2020.
- ^ "Mitchell and Webb bring critically-acclaimed radio sketch show to BBC TWO". BBC. 24 November 2006. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
- ^ "That Mitchell & Webb Look Goes HD". BBC Resources. 22 February 2008. Retrieved 22 February 2008.
- ^ "Mitchell and Webb bring critically-acclaimed radio sketch show to BBC TWO". BBC. 24 November 2006. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
- ^ a b c d "Special: Remain Indoors (with David Mitchell & Jonathan Dryden-Taylor)". Acast (Podcast). 22 March 2020.
- ^ "The Nominees 2006". British Comedy Awards. Archived from the original on 1 June 2007. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
- ^ "Victoria Wood scoops Bafta double". BBC News. 20 May 2007. Retrieved 20 May 2007.
- ^ "The Comedy.co.uk Awards 2006". British Comedy Guide. Retrieved 19 May 2012.
- ^ "Perspective | While Hollywood looked for perfect villains, they were hiding in plain sight". Washington Post. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- ^ "Mitchell and Webb: "What would Mark and Jez be doing now? Wanking"". NME. 14 January 2021. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- ^ "Think you know who the movie villains are? This 'actual villain' meme flips the narrative". The Daily Dot. 8 July 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- ^ Roose, Kevin; Isaac, Mike; Frenkel, Sheera (24 November 2020). "Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- ^ "Post-apocalypse game show: "Hello, good evening, and remain indoors!"". BoingBoing. 12 March 2020. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
- ^ "When David Mitchell Predicted The Future – Remain Indoors". Bleeding Cool. 21 March 2020. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
- ^ "That Mitchell & Webb Look: Series 1 (DVD)". BBC Shop. Retrieved 6 January 2012.
- ^ "That Mitchell and Webb Look: series two DVD review – Den of Geek". Denofgeek.net-genie.co.uk. 16 October 2008. Retrieved 6 July 2009.
- ^ "That Mitchell and Webb Look: series three". Amazon UK. 20 July 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2012.
- ^ "That Mitchell and Webb Look: series four". Amazon UK. 4 October 2010. Retrieved 19 May 2012.
- ^ "That Mitchell and Webb Look on Netflix". Netflix. Retrieved 3 January 2014.
- ^ "BBC Comedy Hit Heads to U.S." NPR. Retrieved 7 February 2008.