This Mitchell and Webb sitcom should come ‘Back’
Even if you like your comedy dark, (Channel 4) can still leave you reeling. Starring Peep Show’s David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the six-part series has explored childhood trauma, jealousy, small-town anxiety and, above all, self-loathing. Fortunately, it is also very, very funny.
The success of Peep Show makes it easy to forget that the Mitchell and Webb partnership doesn’t always work. BBC Two series Ambassadors (2013), in which the pair played British Embassy employees in a fictional Asian country, lacked conviction or, frankly, many good ideas.
Back, written by Simon Blackwell, brings out the best in both actors. Mitchell wrings every last drop of misanthropy from Stephen, a divorced, semi-functioning alcoholic. His plans to revive the fortunes of the John Barleycorn, his late father Laurie’s Cotswolds pub, were derailed by the arrival of Andrew, one of Laurie’s foster children, who barged back into Stephen’s life in the first episode. Webb has never been better, his snide asides and smug air of superiority papering over a painful vulnerability.
Things were looking bleak for Stephen in last night’s concluding episode. The John Barleycorn was thriving under Andrew’s direction. We were even introduced to a sexy French chef who wasted no time in replacing the paninis on the bar menu with a “warm beetroot and fennel salad with sheep’s curd and red onion marmalade”. All the while, Stephen was glugging wine alone in his caravan.
But then it all began to unravel for Andrew, as rumours about his past surfaced. Did he really maim a child while drink-driving in France? Stephen’s detective work in the local library appeared to prove it. “You’ve had your triple-cooked chips, mate,” he told Andrew, triumphantly, only to discover that Laurie wasn’t, in fact, his biological father. As I said, even if you like your comedy dark...
There were enough questions left unanswered to suggest that there will be a second series, and it would be a real shame not to see these characters again. Each of them has been cherished and allowed to blossom. Mitchell and Webb don’t get all the best lines by any means.
Jessica Gunning, as barmaid Jan, is relentlessly upbeat, if not exactly full of bright ideas. And Geoffrey Mcgivern, as boozy yokel and Stephen’s uncle Geoff, is committed to accidentally mucking everything up. But that’s just fine because he goes about his business with such a broad grin. I’d cross fields just to have a pint with either of them.
There was no neat conclusion – just the tantalising prospect of six more episodes. I can’t get back to the John Barleycorn soon enough.
When I run my own newspaper, there will be no interviews, no assessment days. Hell, I don’t even want to see a CV. Every journalist will be hired based on their ability to do one thing and one thing only: to write something original about The Apprentice (BBC One). After 13 series, everything, surely, has been said already.
You could, for example, point out that the tasks are meaningless. A candidate is unlikely to make a suitable business partner for Lord Sugar just because they can redecorate a hotel room (as they were required to do this week). But we know this already because we saw the same candidates flipping burgers in the previous episode, and different (but actually the same) candidates making boiled sweets in the last series, and so on, and so on.
Likewise, we know that the men wear bad suits and worse shoes (does The Apprentice single-handedly keep Burton in business?); and we know that Lord Sugar’s boardroom quips are well past their sell-by-date.
What we don’t know is when the damn thing will ever end. It was chilling to hear this week’s axed candidate, break-dancing business analyst Jeffrey Wan, boast that, “20 years from now, I’ll be hosting The Apprentice.”
I actually thought Wan was hard done by, particularly since the boys’ team Vitality should never have been hauled back into the boardroom. Where the boys had painted the walls and bought some good-looking furniture, Graphene (the girls) had just slapped up some golf ball-themed wallpaper and flung some clubs above the fireplace.
Unfortunately, Lord Sugar lacked the taste to realise just how ghastly it looked. Right, can we talk about something else now?