That Mitchell and Webb Sound at 20: A triumph of simplicity | Twenty years to the day since the radio sketch show first aired, Rhys John Edwards revisits its origins

That Mitchell and Webb Sound at 20: A triumph of simplicity

Twenty years to the day since the radio sketch show first aired, Rhys John Edwards revisits its origins

In August 2003, David Mitchell and Robert Webb were set to front their own radio sketch show for the BBC and lead a new sitcom for Channel 4. They had reached heights they had long aspired to, but neither were particularly optimistic about their future success.

Encouraged to adopt a notable USP for their work, the duo had been experimenting with various formats, but hadn’t quite found their fit. Mitchell references this period in his 2010 memoir Back Story: ‘The sheen had been rubbed off our early, excited experiences … we’d had a few knocks.’

Initial recognition came from self-produced, shoestring-budget shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. With little more than a bare stage, (or slightly raised platform in the corner of a pub), they found their off-the-cuff reactions to slapdash costume changes allowed for their natural comic chemistry to rise above the poor stagecraft and win over their modest crowds. 

They subsequently earned their stripes as contributors to The Armstrong And Miller Show and The 11 O’Clock Show (C4), and behind-the-scenes industry hype implied a starring vehicle of their own would soon follow. 

But by summer 2003, most of their projects had been ignored or resigned to development purgatory. There was a filmed, but never broadcast pilot Daydream Believers, an uneven and ambivalently received The Mitchell and Webb Situation (Play UK), and Bruiser (BBC 2), which was met with neither acclaim nor disdain, despite its impressive cast – including Olivia Colman, Matthew Holness and Martin Freeman – who were ultimately destined for better days. 

Their fortunes changed when they were approached by the BBC to front their own radio sketch show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, the very first sketch from which would, at long last, effectively introduce them to a wider audience. 

In it, Webb’s character confesses that he hasn’t had the heart to mention to long-serving colleague (Mitchell) that he’s had a piece of ham stuck to his upper lip ‘…for 40 years?!’. Webb ponders sympathetically, ‘You must have wondered why you never married…’

And just like that, Mitchell and Webb’s distinctive comic tone was established. A key component of this style being a fusing of surrealism with mundanity; the real essence of their shared humour found in characters existing within a heightened reality but reacting to it as if it’s the everyday.

A sketch about the fox hunting ban? Easy. Just have Webb play a Badger and Mitchell a Fox, bemoaning the ‘amount of Parliamentary time that’s been dedicated to the issue’. 

A parody of Lord of the Rings? No problem. Here’s a group of middle-class Hobbits arguing the left vs right politics of Middle Earth… ‘If we’d listened to people like you 30 years ago, we’d all be speaking dwarf now!’

Much like regular character Raymond Terrific demanding a quick fix for the Aids epidemic in Africa - ‘COME ON BOFFINS!’ - these early sketches favoured a simplistic perspective and found comedy in clashing this against a more complex world. 

As a fan, it’s interesting to think of the tired duo taking these first steps on a path that would eventually lead them to five series of the show, four of its TV spin-off That Mitchell and Webb Look, and nine of what would become Channel 4’s longest running sitcom Peep Show - which was set to air less than four weeks after the radio show!

Perhaps it was their disillusionment that lit the creative spark needed for them to succeed? The sheen having now faded for the pair, allowing for a more uncompromising and crucially - simple - approach to their work.

Mitchell reflects on this: ‘Rob and I had been trying to come up with ways of dressing sketch shows as other things, giving them themes…’

Contemporaries like Matt Lucas and David Walliams, or Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett, had played this game and won, with hit radio series of Little Britain and The Mighty Boosh, making the much sought-after transfer from radio to television. 

But by 2002, they realised this was ‘nonsense’. Mitchell claims they threw Caution to the Wind and proceeded to make ‘a straightforward, theme-less sketch show’.

Their instincts were right – proved, not only through the eventual success of this show, but through the evolution of the pair’s most successful work to date, Peep Show.

Here was a show that was initially commissioned on the basis that it had a ‘gimmicky’ premise. But all involved would later admit that this became increasingly less important over the years.

As the series went on, who really was still tuning in for its nifty first-person camera work rather than the strength of Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain’s scripts and David and Rob’s superb performances? 

With That Mitchell and Webb Sound, the pair thankfully managed to escape the need to package themselves with novelty. And it’s fitting that the only theme eventually decided upon, homed in on the very thing that got them noticed at those Edinburgh Fringe shows in the first place: their pure, stripped back comic instincts.

As Mitchell puts it, the show’s ever-so-important USP turned out to be ‘…every sketch has one of David Mitchell or Robert Webb in it.’

Twenty years later and the show still holds up for precisely this reason. Raymond Terrific would no doubt approve.

• That Mitchell and Webb Sound Series 1-5 are available to download via Audible. Some episodes are on BBC Sounds.

Published: 28 Aug 2023

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