Bob Mortimer

Meanwhile, I am still trying to work out if the return of Vic'n'Bob's Shooting Stars (BBC2) made me smile as much as it did mostly because it was as funny as I'd hoped it would be, if not more so (and a much-needed antidote to the tediously testosterone-fuelled swaggery-smuggery of most TV panel shows), or because it reminded me of 1994, which was a favourite year of mine. No matter, as the contestants (so sweetly and naively) chanted all way back in Big Brother 1, "It's only a game show."

Shooting Stars Review

Time hasn't been kind. There's something a little tragic about Reeves and Mortimer peddling their brand of surreal comedy now they're both 50.

Shooting Stars is back! Show us the scores, George Dawes! Isn't that great news? I think so. As always with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's surreal quiz show (Tuesday, BBC Two), I found about a third of it hilarious, another third perfectly acceptable, and the final third far too weird to comprehend for even a moment. Aside from last year's Christmas Special, the show has been away since 2002. Could it really have been so long? And how would it have aged?

Um, fine. I think. Or maybe it has just aged at the same speed as I have. Vic and Bob have become less like your weirdo neighbours and more like a pair of creepy old uncles, which suits them very well. Bob suddenly seems to bear a startling resemblance to Martin Freeman, although I suppose that might also have been the case last time around, and we just wouldn't have known. Ulrikakaka is back, and Matt Lucas, incredibly, is too. Does anybody know what has happened to Mark Lamarr? Is he OK? They've given us Jack Dee instead ("a sweaty moccasin!" said Vic), which seems perfectly respectable, and also a sort of delivery-man character comic, who might be a regular feature.

In part, I suppose, Shooting Stars was such fun because it was like meeting up with some old friends and hearing them tell all the same old jokes. Will new audiences find them funny, too? Or will they just be baffled and a little scared, like Christine Bleakley was when Vic started rubbing his thighs? Not a clue. Time will tell. I'd quite like to see them hit each other with frying pans in the next episode, though. I've missed that.

Shooting Stars Review

The lazy sense of anticipation might also explain the damp introduction of new regular guest Angelos Epithemiou, a 'burger van owner' who dripped unfunnily all over the show like rancid fat.

Last Night's TV: Shooting Stars

When my mother was in her early twenties, a boyfriend took her to watch a Peter Sellers film. She sat there, sombre and straight-faced, as beside her, and all around her, an entire cinema of men were laughing so hard that they were choking in their 1960s mod collars.

Thirty years on, I spent my undergraduate years being placed in front of Shooting Stars - the must-see new comedy show of the 1990s - suffering from the same affliction. In some communal TV room of a student house boys were laughing so hard that they were dribbling on to their Pixies T-shirts and, occasionally, their transfixion to Vic and Bob and the "Dove from Above" would be broken for a moment to shoot a pitying glance at me, a leaden, lumpen blob who could not even crack a smile at the funniest thing in the universe as it existed in 1995. I think maybe it's genetic.

Little did we know back in 1993 that the bald-headed baby would end up being the most famous person in the room. It's a tribute to Matt Lucas's affection for this surreal platform for Reeves and Mortimer that he is game to play the sideshow. We've had Little Britain since but that hasn't exactly shifted the country's comedic goalposts, so Jack Dee and Ulrika Jonsson are still able to bring misery and sunshine respectively, with relative ease, now being joined by new comic creation Angelos Epithemiou, a burger-van owner with a gelled fringe (played by the once-Perrier-nominated comedian Dan Skinner). The One Show's Christine Bleakley got the trouser-rubbing treatment from Reeves; if he does this for another five years it'll become the equivalent of Brucey's bodybuilder pose. And why not?

Eranu! If the very sound sends giddy shivers down your surrealist spine (an exoskeleton dripping with melting clocks) then the all-old, all-new Shooting Stars would have hit your spot.
If, on the other hand, Eranu! provokes only a baffled shrug, then tuning in to this curiously pointless revival wouldn't have enlightened you as to why it's been exhumed from TV's comedy grave.

It no surprise Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer couldn't let Shooting Stars lie. It was the last hit from the one-time gods of the off-the-wall sketch show and I'll forgive a lot for all the happy times that were inspired by The Man With The Stick.

Add in the fact that Vic had become little more than a support act in the Nancy Sorrell-desperate-for-fame game and Bob was reduced to guest slots on Big Brother's Little Brother, and the chance to reboot Shooting Stars must have seemed like manna from heaven.

But they might as well have screened a repeat because Shooting Stars 2009 was the same as it ever was but not in a good way. It was like watching ageing rock stars who'd once filled stadiums still hacking out the old tunes in a grotty backstreet club. Vic and Bob had turned into their own tribute act but the dodgy stuff they once got away with by the skin of their charm now feels rather creepy.

Back in the day, Vic could carry off the thigh-rubbing perving over female guests but now having him waft his bum crack under the understandably wrinkled nose of Christine Bleakley from The One Show made him look like a candidate for the Sex Offenders Register.

There were laughs but they were drawn from comfy familiarity, not edgy wit. Vic's club singer, riffing out an impromptu chorus of Beyonce's Single Ladies, is still good value.

And Matt Lucas - an unknown in the original but now an unofficial guest star - has a baby-suited ball as scores-on-the-doors George Dawes (offspring of Marjorie?).

But the bad things about Shooting Stars, not least the unforgivable perpetuation of Ulrika-ka-ka Jonsson, made this non-revamp feel as stale as yesterday's droppings from the Dove From Above. They really, really, should have let it lie.

So, Shooting Stars returned to our screens last night and for me, there was a lot riding on it. The show had been one of my favourite things in the history of telly and revisiting it could have been suicide for the show. However, Vic and Bob still have a penchant for the ridiculous, so there wasn't too much to worry about... right? After watching the latest offering, back after a so-so Christmas special, last night proved to be more of the same.

Kicking off with the good, the New Shooting Stars felt comfortingly familiar. The Dove From Above, Vic perving over the Pretty Guest, the oddball contraptions, George Dawes' song and the pisstake homage to something from the world of pop culture... it was all there and for the most part, pretty decent. Not uniformly brilliant, but decent all the same.

The biggest laugh (personally) came with a puerile, gross-out joke, which saw Vic unveiling his skiddy underpants to The One Show's Christine Bleakley, who clearly didn't know what the hell to do. Nor did the rest of the studio, which has always been the calling card of Shooting Stars. Everything falls apart and you feel a bit drunk whilst it is all going off around your ears.

However... some parts of the show dragged a bit. Like a snake wearing a nappy filled with boiled cabbage. Vic looked a little tired, leaving Bob to provide the octane. One joke made me grimace (not in a good way). Yep. The one about "Enid Brighton" That was followed up with Ray Kay Rowring and, to be honest, I've always expected more from this pairing. For a duo that could pluck a joke from absolutely nowhere, to lean on Foreign People Talk Funny Don't They? jokes is a let-down. You wouldn't like it if Jim Davidson told it.

However, at times, it was typically brilliant from Vic and Bob. Bob's "loooving you, is easy coz your boobs are new" at Ulrika was great fun and the endgame was pleasantly odd. Yet at other times, it felt like Elvis in Vegas, with people gamely clapping along to the old hits whilst a slightly tubby man didn't quite nail it like he used to.

With any luck, they're finding their stride again and as the new series continues, it'll hit vintage form again. I hope so at any rate.

Last night's TV

Why, I wondered, has Shooting Stars returned? And then I watched it - and laughed non-stop.

Stellar comeback for Shooting Stars

Vic and Bob were back on BBC2 with a bang last night as revived panel show Shooting Stars grabbed an impressive 2.7m (13.7% share) at 10pm.