Bob Mortimer

Radio Times review

Imagine a 1970s domestic sitcom left so long in the cupboard it's gone fizzy, then been taken out, dipped in sprinkles and thoroughly baked by the surreal imaginations of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. That's the drift here. The notional setting is Bob's house, where Vic is a troublesome lodger who fills the place with junk - a painting of a pygmy, tins of pineapple, and so on. In the opening scene Vic sings a song about a knight's gauntlet he has just acquired, then Bob berates him for getting toilet rolls and curtains mixed up. Matt Berry arrives as their friend Beef, an expansive lothario of the kind Berry does better than anyone, and there's a man-eating neighbour called Julie.

The farcical sort-of-plot they get wrapped up in barely matters (Vic gets wedged in a hole cut between the two houses) and it's as obsessed with body parts and weird about the opposite sex as a 12-year-old boy. But if you like Vic and Bob's ludicrous humour, it's very funny.

Vic & Bob interview

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer promise 'heavy nudity' and 'acting the giddy aunt' in their new sitcom.

Bob Mortimer interview

'I suppose it is formally our first 28 minute studio sitcom but it reminds me of the longer bits we used to do in our sketch shows.'

Bob Mortimer questions Oxbridge bias in comedy

Comedian Bob Mortimer has criticised the amount of prominent Oxbridge alumni in the broadcasting and entertainment industries.

All hail The Female Inbetweeners. There's lots to like here: sharp one-liners, the right level of smut and warm female friendships, centred on getting drunk and mocking each other. Episode one sets it up: chief drifter Meg (Jessica Knappett) returns from India and plans to live at home with her parents (Bob Mortimer and Arabella Weir) until she gets "a cool, arty, media-y job". In the second episode, the girls gatecrash a wake and rename the walk of shame the "stride of pride". Lovely and funny.

Radio Times review

Teenagers and parents who ought to know better will recognise Jessica Knappett as Neil's klutzy love interest in The Inbetweeners Movie. She had a helping hand from Damon Beesley and Iain Morris - the comic brains behind that incorrigible foursome - when writing this. It's basically a female Inbetweeners, except this time our hapless heroines are also old enough to know better: three 20-somethings fresh from university and struggling to find their feet, never mind their rent. This opening double bill doesn't quite deliver. Yes, it's impudently indecorous but these ladies are too two-dimensional. Look out for Bob Mortimer as Knappett's long-suffering father.

Hitching a ride on the coat-tails of the seventh series of The Big Bang Theory, this new British sitcom might not have a snowball's chance in hell of matching that for clever gags.

But give it a chance. It's written by and stars Jessica Knappett as Meg alongside Lydia Rose Bewley and Lauren O'Rourke, who were all in The Inbetweeners Movie.

But as these girls are in their mid-20s, it's closer in age (if not in cleverness) to Lena Dunham's Girls than a female Inbetweeners, mining that period after university when your dream career fails to drop into your lap and you end up drifting between dead-end jobs and even more dead-end relationships.

Arabella Weir and Bob Mortimer play Meg's parents.

Best bit of the second episode of tonight's double bill shows why you should never order oysters on a first date. Set in Leeds, its crassness is part of its charm.

Jessica Knappett: why she's not a female Inbetweener

The writer and star of the new E4 sitcom talks Girls, Bob Mortimer, dressing up as a giant mobile phone and the second Inbetweeners movie...

In the last series, Bob Mortimer was responsible for one of the show's classic moments when he claimed to be able to tear an apple in half with his bare hands. After an interrogation by David Mitchell that reduced Patsy Kensit to hysterics, Mitchell's team decided he was lying. He wasn't - and, to everyone's delight, he proved it.

Mortimer returns tonight and we can only hope for similarly priceless TV. Other guests include RT's own Sarah Millican (who once claimed on the show to have weed on a car seat and blamed it on the dog) and actor David Harewood. If we don't get a Homeland-related anecdote/fabrication from him, it'll be very disappointing.

Vic and Bob: an appreciation

With their sitcom House Of Fools recently announced, we celebrate the enduring comedy brilliance of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer...