British Comedy Guide
David Mitchell
David Mitchell

David Mitchell (I)

  • 50 years old
  • English
  • Actor, writer and presenter

Press clippings Page 42

Was It Something I Said?, yet another comedy panel show (this one based, with great originality, around quotations), has been hand-tooled to inherit Homeland's audience, not only going out directly after the new adventures of Carrie Mathison, but also featuring actor David Harewood - Homeland's now blown-to-smithereens CIA director David Estes - as guest quotation reader.

Host David Mitchell has, of course, been recently conducting a media discourse with Fast Show creator Charlie Higson over whether or not comedy panel shows are blocking other, rather more expensive forms of television comedy. Higson was a guest last night, so the timing of that spat makes you cynically wonder whether it wasn't merely pre-show publicity, or whether Higson had a genuinely bad time recording last night's opener.

Mitchell's riposte has been that panel shows are often more funny than scripted comedy, a view to which I'm not unsympathetic, especially when Richard Ayoade was holding forth last night, effortlessly neutralising supposed team-mate Jimmy Carr. Did I write neutralise, or did I mean neuter? These macho cockfights are the reason why female comedians give such shows a wide berth, and needless to say, all six panellists were male. Mitchell had even grown a Mumford-lush beard, while Carr appeared to be in the process of growing one - it was as if their faces were actively leaking testosterone.

Gerard Gilbert, The Independent, 6th October 2013

David Mitchell interview

Digital Spy spoke to David Mitchell about the show, his favourite quotes, Robert Webb's Star Wars obsession and why Twitter is more than just "pointless minutiae"...

Morgan Jeffery, Digital Spy, 3rd October 2013

David Mitchell: I want a Peep Show reunion... in 20 years

David Mitchell has said that even if Peep Show is cancelled after the next series, he hopes there will be a reunion show one day.

Metro, 2nd October 2013

Opinion: Sketch shows v panel games

I think it would be pushing it to say that there is a raging feud between Charlie Higson and David Mitchell over a 'crisis' in TV comedy.

Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 27th September 2013

David Mitchell defends panel shows

Panel show regular answers criticism from Charlie Higson that format crowds out sketch shows.

Adam Sherwin, The Independent, 25th September 2013

David Mitchell interview

David Mitchell talks about his new comedy panel show about quotations.

Channel 4, 24th September 2013

Two panels of celebrities led by David Mitchell and Phill Jupitus. An extremely sarcastic host with a distinctive laugh. And the occasional run-in with Ofcom and certain newspapers when someone (hello Jack Whitehall) takes things too far. Yes, it can only be Channel 4's quick-witted pub-quiz-style-show, which returns with some fiendish questions about the 1980s. Most of the guests should have no trouble recalling the events of that decade but we are a bit concerned about how much Alan Carr will remember. He wasn't born until 1976.

Jane Rackham, Radio Times, 22nd September 2013

New series of That Mitchell & Webb Sound

Robert Webb and David Mitchell are un-expectedly returning to Radio 4 with a fifth series of sketch show That Mitchell & Webb Sound.

British Comedy Guide, 16th September 2013

Knee-jerk reactions, klaxons and Kiesselbach's plexus are among the subjects under scurrilous discussion as QI returns for its 11th series - which means we've reached the letter K in our comedy intellectual hike through the alphabet. Fount of all knowledge Stephen Fry is back on his throne, the kittenish Alan Davies by his side, joined tonight by perennial quiz show panellist David Mitchell, versatile Jack Whitehall - showing his brainy side after laddy larks with One Direction on A League Of Their Own - and comedian Sara Pascoe. Kick back and find out how Father Christmas, the colour orange and pandas manage to pad their way into the show.

Carol Carter and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro, 6th September 2013

There's bound to be ribaldry in an episode titled Knees and Knockers so lie down on your antique fainting couch right now as Stephen Fry and the teams get blushingly saucy. But it's all good fun and even educational. Come on, don't tell me you're not curious about where in the human body the "end-bulbs of Krause" are? Or the pores of Kohn? (Clue: it's not the title of a Star Trek movie.)

Elsewhere, David Mitchell has one of his Would I Lie To You?-type comic rants, this time about, of all things, the supposed idiocy of pandas. We learn why robins are associated with Christmas, the rules for the driving of cars in early 20th-century Pennsylvania and why red kites are called red kites, even though they aren't red.

Alison Graham, Radio Times, 6th September 2013

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