Mitchell and Webb return with trailer for new sketch series Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping

16 years after the end of That Mitchell And Webb Look, the Peep Show duo are getting back into the sketch game.

Mitchell and Webb return with trailer for new sketch series Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping
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Good news for fans of British sketch comedy—and specifically That Mitchell And Webb Look, the series that brought us such immortal lines as “Are we the baddies?” and “That’s Numberwang!”—as the U.K.’s Channel 4 has begun rolling out the promotional apparatus for David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s new sketch series, Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping.

That includes the above trailer, which shows that neither Ludwig star Mitchell nor long-time partner Webb have suddenly aged into the kind of dignity that involves not dressing up like supervillains or exploding dogs with a glance. They’re not alone, either: The new trailer prominently features new cast members Stevie Martin and Kiell Smith-Bynoe (both, our brain can’t help but chime in, past Taskmaster contestants), plus Lara Ricote and Krystal Evans, helping to build the satirical chaos.

Although Mitchell and Webb have worked together regularly since That Mitchell And Webb Look went off the air back in 2010—including scripted shows Ambassadors and Back, and the later seasons of Succession creator Jesse Armstrong’s Peep Show—the new series marks a return to the sketch format that helped make them famous. In the past, their comedy has run the gamut from genuine satire—note the sketch that opens the trailer here, in which Mitchell delivers a depressingly familiar threat to cook the entire planet in about 60 years’ time—to rampant silliness, and doesn’t seem to have slowed down here. (Even if we don’t get a return glimpse at old characters like Sir Digby Chicken Caesar.)

And, in case the trailer wasn’t enough, the show has also deployed a full sketch, too, albeit a fairly simple one: A quick takedown (with Martin and Webb in the villain roles) of exactly how stressful it is to go through airport security of late.

The new series is expected to debut on Channel 4 in September; no word on how it’ll end up making its way over to the U.S. for American comedy nerds to enjoy.

 
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