That Mitchell & Webb Look
Friday saw us off to watch bits for The Mitchell & Webb Look being filmed. We've been keen on M&W for some time, both on radio, in Peep Show, and the Mitchell & Webb Situation, a much earlier TV sketch show they did which no-one else appears to like. Bruiser sucked a BDC though.
The boys did the snooker commentators, which was pleasing for me as I'd been worried how these sketches would translate to the visual. Would we see snooker footage with the commentary over the top, or would be see the commentators themselves and lose the anonymity of the characters. The latter option was plumped for, with a certain amount of additional business thrown in, some practical burgers (masterful mayonnaise work from Mitchell) and a home-brew kit.
Filmed inserts included the pelican crossing sketch, a favourite from the second warm-up we went to, and the "aristocratic people who are still unaccountably..." in this case working in a clothing store. Mitchell does the insensed posh bloke slightly too well. He might be Hitler.
There were new bits, too, including a wonderfully sinister series of sketches about the earliest TV broadcasts, the concept being that they literally had no idea how to do television to begin with. The massive ear-pieces, cultish applause cues and the naming of television as "the endlessness" gave the sketches a nightmarish David Foster Wallace quality.
And the lovely Lyndsay, to whom I am a sort of surrogate dirty cousin, has been working on the series, gadding about in abandoned wings of hospitals and the like. She's in vision on a couple of the "behind the scenes" skits too, which is nice.
Oh and it was David Mitchell's birthday. And Australian woman Julia Morris was the warm-up. When she announced early on that she'd been in the UK for six years, an audience member piped up with a disgruntled "we know" which was funnier than the rest of her material. Ah well, at least she didn't break the cardinal rule of being funnier than the main talent.
The boys did the snooker commentators, which was pleasing for me as I'd been worried how these sketches would translate to the visual. Would we see snooker footage with the commentary over the top, or would be see the commentators themselves and lose the anonymity of the characters. The latter option was plumped for, with a certain amount of additional business thrown in, some practical burgers (masterful mayonnaise work from Mitchell) and a home-brew kit.
Filmed inserts included the pelican crossing sketch, a favourite from the second warm-up we went to, and the "aristocratic people who are still unaccountably..." in this case working in a clothing store. Mitchell does the insensed posh bloke slightly too well. He might be Hitler.
There were new bits, too, including a wonderfully sinister series of sketches about the earliest TV broadcasts, the concept being that they literally had no idea how to do television to begin with. The massive ear-pieces, cultish applause cues and the naming of television as "the endlessness" gave the sketches a nightmarish David Foster Wallace quality.
And the lovely Lyndsay, to whom I am a sort of surrogate dirty cousin, has been working on the series, gadding about in abandoned wings of hospitals and the like. She's in vision on a couple of the "behind the scenes" skits too, which is nice.
Oh and it was David Mitchell's birthday. And Australian woman Julia Morris was the warm-up. When she announced early on that she'd been in the UK for six years, an audience member piped up with a disgruntled "we know" which was funnier than the rest of her material. Ah well, at least she didn't break the cardinal rule of being funnier than the main talent.
posted by Hamilton's Brain | 1:05 am
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