David Mitchell (I)

A brand new game for Friday nights: spot Joanna Lumley. She's absolutely unrecognisable as a bonkers bicycling pensioner in Jennifer Saunders' gentle rural comedy set in Clatterford in Devon - one of those imaginary villages where you can't step out of your cottage without tripping over a dozen or so gurning eccentrics.

But what this lacks in laughs it makes up for in star names. As well as Saunders playing a rich, horsey, friend of Madonna-type, there's Pauline McLynn from Father Ted, Sally Phillips from Smack The Pony, Maggie Steed as the leader of the Women's Guild, a bubble-permed Dawn French as the village idiot, and David Mitchell of That Mitchell And Webb Look.

The piece was actually written for Sue Johnston who plays Sal Vine, the practice nurse whose doctor husband rather thoughtlessly keels over and dies.

Perhaps because of the huge cast, and the way slapstick comedy runs alongside sadness, this first episode feels like a patchwork quilt knocked up from leftover wool.

But some scenes, such as when Sal is visited by a hopeless grief counsellor (the brilliant Rosie Cavaliero) suggest it might be worth giving it a chance to find its feet.

The omens are good for this new Friday-night comedy: it's packed with talent - including Joanna Lumley, Sue Johnston, David Mitchell, Pauline McLynn, Dawn French and Sally Phillips. It's also written by Jennifer Saunders, whose flappywomen comedy formula may not be universally popular, but it has a devoted following among viewers.

But, my goodness, it's hard to find laugh-out-loud moments in this first episode - or even smile-politely ones even though the setting of the action should inspire them: a small Devon village characterised by League of Gentlemenly oddness.

Peep Show funny men David Mitchell and Robert Webb remind us that they're not just great comic actors but gifted writers as well with this new sketch show that's been adapted seamlessly from Radio 4's ]That Mitchell and Webb Sound].

Masters Of Comedy

Mitchell and Webb are interviewed by The Guardian.

Mitchell and Webb Situation

We're faced with a duo trying to find a voice and as a result the material misses more often than it hits. For every sketch that works there's also one that doesn't, another that goes on for far too long, another that's undeveloped and another still that's simply over-egged.

As Ricky Gervais quite rightly commented at last week's Comedy Awards, it is both a travesty and a debacle that Peep Show (Friday, Channel 4) didn't win anything. Persistently the best thing on television at the moment -- a winning blend of clever, stupid and dark -- Peep Show, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, has also managed the achievement of being a British sitcom that stayed hot even in its third series, which puts it in very select company indeed (Blackadder, Rising Damp, Yes Minister, Dad's Army).

Mitchell and Webb Review

The radio show features topical humour without trying too hard to be up-to-the-minute, delivers satisfyingly dark material without striving to shock, and has a presiding intelligence that makes you want to weep with gratitude.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb have put together a wonderful radio comedy programme of satirical sketches. The show is a relativly quick-fire montage of sketches, which manages to be topical while not directly impersonating or parodying any specific figures, in the same way the shows such as Dead Ringers do.

The live-in lovers have finally made it to the altar; the groom is reading the wedding vows he wrote himself. We're both well past 30 now, and unless we get married we should probably split up, he says. But I'm buggered if I'm carrying all those books back down four flights of stairs... Will you be my first wife?

This cynical little scene comes from the sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound, a cut or three above most current radio comedy. If you're sufficiently twisted, you'll also enjoy a wicked spoof of those so-serious charity appeals, this time for Hairdressers Sans Frontières: This is Mwerere. She has to walk 15 miles every day to collect clean water... That's why I gave her this short, very manageable look.