David Mitchell and Robert Webb talk reviving their sketch show and why Peep Show is a no-go for Webb’s daughters

Side by side is still how we usually see these two comics in our mind’s eye, thanks to reruns of That Mitchell and Webb Look and Peep Show (Mitchell: "a sitcom so perfect that it scuppered all chances of us ever writing one ourselves").

In TV terms, though, the last time we glimpsed them in the same room was in 2021, when Mitchell sat in the front row of the Strictly Come Dancing studio audience and cheered on Webb as he danced to The Muppet Show theme tune dressed as Kermit the Frog.

At that point, 11 years had elapsed since their sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look ran its course, a decision that the pair are keen to emphasise was out of their hands. Webb casts his mind back to the lunch where BBC commissioning editor for comedy Cheryl Taylor told them that their show wouldn’t get another series: "She talked for about 40 minutes about, 'Various other projects that you might be interested in and where do you want to go from here,' and blah-blah-blah, while I sat there like an eight-year-old boy. Finally she said, 'So what would you like to do?' And I went, 'I’d like to do series five of That Mitchell and Webb Look, please.'"

They can laugh about it now because (a) getting some sort of punchline out of tricky situations seems to be their default mode; and (b) however awkward that meeting was, it must have only served to sweeten the improbable afterlife that the duo’s sketches have enjoyed. Unless you’ve been living off-grid, you’ll be only too aware that – contrary to what the main channels decided – sketch comedy didn’t die. It just moved to YouTube, Facebook and TikTok, where you let the algorithms make you laugh all day. And amid the surfeit of new young comics armed merely with a phone, some editing software and a few funny ideas, there is a delicious twist: it turns out that several sketches from That Mitchell and Webb Look didn’t just fit this new world, they portended it.

It’s not uncommon, in 2025, to hear someone respond to some impenetrable but significant statistic by explaining "That’s Numberwang!" – an allusion to the demented maths quiz depicted on the show. Another sketch has offered one of the most popular internet memes of the decade. In an era of confirmation bias and curated news, no newer sketch has felt quite as resonant as the sight of Mitchell’s SS officer turning to Webb’s Nazi colleague and asking, "Hans, are we the baddies?" The thrilling novelty of being, in some way, modern, isn’t lost on Mitchell – who, as a child, used to enjoy pretending to be "an elderly king" and remembers "feeling pleased" when he realised that if he didn’t dry his hands after washing them, they "resembled an old man’s hands".

Mitchell says that the first "incontrovertible" evidence that one of the duo’s sketches had re-entered the culture came with the ongoing love for their 2008 "Watch the Football!" sketch, in which we see fast-cut footage of an excitable host pacing around an empty stadium declaiming that "coming up midweek, the giants of Charlton play host to the titans of Ipswich, making them both seem normal-sized". Earlier this year, Sky Sports even created its own pastiche. "I was delighted," smiles Mitchell, "because they’d clearly watched the first one carefully. We didn’t have footage of matches on ours because we couldn’t clear any. But they could and they chose not to because they were trying to make it exactly like our one!"

Still, despite this second life for their creations, when the duo received a call from Ian Katz from Channel 4 offering to revive their sketch show, their response was gratitude, if not outright shock. And tempting as it was to pick up where they left off in 2010, the changing comedy landscape that had played a part in bringing That Mitchell and Webb Look to an end needed to be reflected in its successor. So joining the team in the planning stages of Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping was comic Stevie Martin, who went viral with her sketch Verifying That You’re Not a Robot – a gloriously manic display immediately recognisable to anyone who has been barred from accessing their details online unless they can successfully click on all the squares that feature traffic lights.

Completing the writers’ room with her were Kiell-Smith Bynoe (Ghosts, Stath Lets Flats) and relative newcomers Krystal Evans and Lara Ricote. Is it scary having to think of funny things in front of two comics like Mitchell and Webb, who helped shape your own comedy? "It certainly would be if they weren’t aware of that," says Martin. Ricote agrees, noting that the pair were proactive in breaking the ice. "Robert would always say a really bad idea at the beginning – like some embarrassing thing you shouldn’t say. And from there, we were like, 'That’s great. Now we can kind of say whatever we like.'"

Whatever picture they have in their minds of a national treasure, Mitchell and Webb are in no rush to insert themselves into it. At 51 and 52, they’re still young enough to find themselves straining for the right words when confronted by their own heroes. Webb visibly clenches at the memory of meeting Rowan Atkinson a few years ago. "I just gushed," he recalls. "I said, 'This is amazing!' and it was awful because he’s a very shy person. And I’m going, 'Because I used to watch you when I was young and then…' And he went, 'And then you grew up.'"

"Well, at least you say things," reassures Mitchell, "I just go very quiet. Afterwards, I realise I didn’t say anything nice. Years ago – and this is still one of the most amazing things that ever happened to me – I was sitting in a pub in Kilburn and Michael Palin came in and, it turns out, knew who I was. So he came over to say hello, but I didn’t find an organised way of saying, 'How nice of you to come over and say hello' and 'I’m a huge admirer of your work and the way you conduct yourself in the world'" – Mitchell is now sounding positively anguished – "and if I could have said those things, however eggy that would have been to say them, I would have felt… well, at least he knows that’s what I think about him."

Palin and Atkinson, of course, are two entertainers who got their start in sketch comedy, but soon moved on to other things. While Mitchell and Webb have seized other opportunities along the way – be it bestselling memoirs (Webb’s How Not to Be a Boy) or TV (Mitchell has chalked up more than 160 episodes of Would I Lie to You? and is set to film a second series of detective dramedy Ludwig) – you suspect that sketches are the main space into which they decant their affection for each other. Aged 17, still grieving the death of his mother from cancer, Webb applied to Cambridge University with the specific intention of finding a comedy partner. Unbeknown to him, Mitchell had arrived there with the same plan. By the time the pair set eyes on each other, Webb enjoyed a certain amount of status as the vice-president of Footlights.

Reliving the moment he first saw Mitchell perform, he told Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs: "I’ve only had to be smart in my career once, and that was the decision not to compete with [him] but instead to capture him and take some of his goodness for myself."

Lest there be any doubt that this was the comedy equivalent of love at first sight, head to YouTube. You can actually see a glimmer of this burgeoning relationship in Pissed Grandmasters, a Footlights sketch filmed in 1995. In it, the duo play two inebriated chess players. While Webb looks like he’s come straight from a Suede gig, Mitchell doesn’t look a day over 14.

It’s cute, but you can see why the middle-aged versions sitting before me might feel somewhat more comfortable in their own skin. Between then and now, they’ve been best men at each other’s weddings. At the home Mitchell shares with Only Connect presenter and professional poker player Victoria Coren Mitchell and their two daughters, screen time is spent swerving comedy because "it can feel a bit too much like a busman’s holiday". Instead, he leans towards cosy crime. Watching him momentarily drift into a reverie as he says, "Imagine discovering a Morse you haven’t seen before…" might be the most David Mitchell thing you’ll ever see in your life. Meanwhile, at the house of Webb and his wife, writer and comedian Abigail Burgess, dinner happens "in front of the telly", where Frasier, Friends and Derry Girls have been a hit with their daughters. But Peep Show remains a no-go because "there’s just too much me having sex with the camera".

And what will their families make of Mitchell and Webb Version 2.0? Well, they haven’t seen it yet. But I have – and, having watched the entire series, I’m happy to report that each episode yields a generous return in belly laughs.

Incoming highlights include a imagined re-enactment of the moment Björn from Abba (Webb) hands Agnetha (Stevie Martin) the just-written lyrics to Thank You for the Music and she sees that they start with the lines, "I’m nothing special/In fact I’m a bit of a bore"; an alien race called The Goom who, in a desperate attempt to avert their imminent extinction, have pooled their depleted resources into making a teenage musical called High School Faux Pas; and, perhaps best of the lot, the therapist sketch, in which Webb’s patient comes to the realisation that his therapist, played by Mitchell, is relieving him of £300 a week so that he can offload responses that consist of variations on "That must be difficult".

Given that Webb has had experience of the therapy process and Mitchell has thus far avoided it, is it fair to surmise that the sketch might be viewed as a vessel for his suspicion that a lot of therapy might, for a minority of its practitioners, be a grift with no apparent end?

"Well, of course it helps to talk about things," says Webb, somewhat carefully, "but what I sometimes wonder is if it ever just comes to a point where you should just f***ing get over it – would they actually tell you to do that?"

And besides, what could be more therapeutic than laughter itself? Back in 2009, Mitchell said he stuck by his childhood belief that "comedy, humour, is the cleverest, the highest human art, the greatest human achievement". But now he can’t help noticing that not everyone agrees. "As a culture, we have to pretend it’s easy and trivial."

Webb: "…which is how you end up in a situation where Groundhog Day doesn’t get a single Oscar nomination and The Crying Game – which obviously isn’t s**t but isn’t Groundhog Day, one of the best films ever – gets loads."

Mitchell cites a section in one of the last episodes of Ben Elton’s Shakespeare sitcom Upstart Crow, in which Elton decides to forego any laughs and go for a moment of pure sadness, as Shakespeare (played by Mitchell) receives news of his son’s death: "When it ran, everyone said that it was brilliant and the thing they liked most about it was that ending. God knows we take praise where we can get it, but what you want to say is that we did joke after joke – tightly scripted episodes where a Shakespearean story is used to tell a different sitcom story. And that’s really, really difficult! What isn’t difficult is just a solemn bit on the end where you go, 'It’s sad that a child died.' That, comparatively speaking, is a piece of piss!"

One wonders what a real psychotherapist – as opposed to the funny pretend one in their sketch show – might have to say about this militant aversion to seriousness. But David Mitchell, in full flight, is past caring. "As my wife once put it, there’s no funnier phrase than 'This is no laughing matter'. The presence of seriousness means that there’s a big laugh somewhere, and that’s where, as comedians, you’re naturally tempted to go."

Based on this return, long may Mitchell and Webb continue to go there.

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