It has been 15 years since That Mitchell and Webb Look left our screens, but it’s still hanging around like a funny smell. Inexplicable quiz Numberwang springs to mind every time a ludicrously complex gameshow airs; hyperbolic football coverage invariably evokes the show’s Sky Sports parody – “there is still everything to play for … and for ever to play it in!” – even for the broadcaster itself, which recently recreated the skit for promo purposes. It has never been easier to run into the duo online: the SS officer tentatively asking his skull-festooned colleague if they could possibly be “the baddies” has had a second life as a Trump-era meme. Then there are the ones that have seared themselves on to my memory for no apparent reason, like the sketch in which a swaggering marketing team workshop new ways to sell toothbrushes (they can also clean your tongue!).
Arriving just as Peep Show was taking off, That Mitchell and Webb Look didn’t quite reach Fast Show levels of ubiquity, but it was clever, memorable and distinctive enough to infiltrate the monoculture. It was also part of sketch comedy’s last hurrah. The genre’s 00s TV heyday wasn’t always edifying (see the social poison pedalled by Little Britain and Bo’ Selecta), yet its almost total eradication – a sketch show hasn’t been Bafta-nominated for over a decade and there is no longer any category that could feasibly accommodate one – has robbed us not only of a particular source of joy, but an important mechanism for digesting the world.
