Mar142008

Get “That Mitchell and Webb Look”

Filed Under Sketch Comedy

I love Mitchell and Webb’s sitcom “Peep Show”, so I’ve been thrilled to indulge in their sketch comedy show “That Mitchell and Webb Look”, which began its run on BBC America just last month. You can, and should, check it out at 9:20 PM tonight.

Here’s a taste, a very brilliant and appropriate short sketch which features Robert Webb as somebody who really, really wants something particular for Christmas.

More pleasurable to my comedy nerd heart is Numberwang, a running sketch about a confusing game show. The following clip, I believe, was the first and all of the following versions use it as a template. But yet I find it surprising every single time.

The best part about the sketch: everybody in it seems to believe there’s some logic in the game. So often a sketch is done like this where one person has to be the straight man to point out the absurdities of what’s happening. This one they let everybody be nuts and the absurdities hit even harder, because everyone inside it believes they make complete sense.

By the way, one of the great things about the BBC’s short seasons is that talented folks like these can switch up and do an entirely different series for a time, in this case going from “Peep Show” to “That Mitchell and Webb Look” and back again. It keeps funny people from feeling stuck inside a premise which may not fit all their comedic ideas. It’d be kind of nice to see an American cable channel take a similar philosophy, alternating seasons of two different shows for some talented comic. It would be fun to see what the creators and cast behind “Reno 911!” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” could do with a sketch show.

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