Friday 19 June 2009

THAT MITCHELL & WEBB LOOK 3.2

Friday 19 June 2009

Hit-and-miss. Just kidding! Well, it wasn't as good as last week's opener, but there weren't too many sketches that didn't make me giggle or smile, if only a few that had a genuinely brilliant idea behind them. It's a shame that a few of M&W's better ideas are stretched beyond their natural end-point, though. Which leads me to...

Great: A really funny sketch with Webb playing a clichéd German mad scientist from the '40s whose "Death Ray" is revealed to be an antiquated bardcode reader (let down by the sketch continuing past the "tinned peaches" punchline, growing unfunnier every second); a sketch with an imaginary Gary Rhodes helping a gay man during a first date; round 2 of the post-apocalyptic Remain Indoors quiz; and the return of the snooker commentators in a documentary showing how they both won the 1975 championship.

Good: Obvious advert slogans (not punchy, just rambling and needlessly specific); women-focused adverts to "sort themselves out" in comparison to men-focused adverts to just shave and get drunk; a little poke at the common complaint that sketch shows are "hit-and-miss"; a ventriloquist thief (loved the cops capturing the dummy and interrogating it for five hours); "Get Me Hennimore", a pastiche of '70s sitcoms and their obvious set-ups (much funnier than the golf one last week); Polite Taxi Driver (simple idea, but Webb was funny); and a sketch with Webb complaining that Mitchell's started performing parts he should play (using split-screen doubles.)

Bad: Posh Jaws (brief, not funny); and Captain Todger, an uncouth superhero at a press conference that the police would prefer didn't speak to the press.