Back on track for laughs
BEST news of the day? BACK is back. In response, I’d imagine you’ll now be saying one of three things. Possibly you’ll be saying: “Fantastic! I love that show.” Alternatively, though, you’ll be saying: “Sorry, what’s ‘Back’? Should I know that one?Who’s in it?”
Or maybe, if you’re anything like me, on hearing the words “Back is back”, your instinctive response, because you just can’t help yourself, will be to sing the next lines: “I want my baby back / It’s grey, it’s grey, since she went away, oh oh…” But try not to do that last one, because apparently it’s really annoying. Or so my wife says.
BACK (C4, 10pm) is the blisteringly funny Mitchell and Webb sitcom that first went out in September 2017, pretty much a lifetime ago.
Robert Webb plays Andrew, who’s returned to the family that took him in as a kid.And David Mitchell plays his foster brother Stephen, whose plans for the family’s Gloucestershire pub – the John Barleycorn – following the death of his father, have been somewhat scuppered since Andrew’s return.
Smooth-talking charmer Andrew, of course, may be an imposter. That’s always been one of the key questions.The wonderfully irascible Stephen has certainly queried his identity, desperate to expose him as such.
But in the final moments of series one, it was Stephen’s own past that we’d started having doubts about.
Series two starts with Stephen heading home after a long spell away, with what looks like a fresh spring in his step, while for Andrew it seems the novelty of running the pub is wearing thin.
Also, a new, altogether less traditional hostelry is opening up just a short distance away – and when it comes to hiring someone to manage it, the owners aren’t looking too far afield...
Elsewhere tonight we have another spin-off from The Chase. This one is called THE CHASERS’ ROAD TRIP: TRAINS, BRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (ITV, 9pm). (Because, let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a 12-syllable title programme title..?) There’s no Bradley Walsh, but what it does have is resident quizzers Anne Hegerty, Mark Labbett and Shaun Wallace setting off on an adventure together, “to hunt down the truth about the one thing that means most to them – intelligence…”
Theirs is a mission with three objectives – namely:
(1) to find out if animals are brainier than we think, (2) to figure out if child geniuses are actually born that way, and (3) to look at the likelihood of human intelligence being overtaken by the robotty kind.
First up, they’re off to pit their wits against a bunch of bonobos, our closest ape cousins.