David Mitchell (I)

Absurdity continues to reign unfettered in this fourth run of David Mitchell and Robert Webb's Bafta-winning sketch show, as characters new and old romp on to the screen to ever greater comic effect. The duo have the happy knack of finding hidden laughs in unlikely places and then working them up into infectious flights of fancy. Tonight's highlights include the conspiracy behind the conspiracy behind the fake fake Moon landings; how to get cash for any unused plutonium you may have around the house; plus "Late Night Dog Poker".

David Mitchell and Robert Webb, or their team of writers, have a knack for spotting everyday irritations and turning them into the stuff of cathartic comedy. Last week it was rogue pronunciations. This week, there's a sketch for anyone who has ever groaned at the endless trails and recaps in factual programmes ("Coming up..." "Earlier on we saw how..." etc). We watch as banal events in a gift shop ("I'm looking for a gift for my aunt") are edited to death in order to create a spurious sense of tension. Sound familiar? That's one of the better sketches, as is this week's edition of macabre, post-apocalyptic TV show The Quiz Broadcast, which moves into Deal or No Deal territory. And the snooker commentators have a new gig: Late-Night Dog Poker.

Glorious: and a tragedy that the Mitchell chap in the last sketch, about pedantry - he took it upon himself to shoot employees who said "haitch" and "expresso", quite right - shot himself over an infelicitation, because I love pedantry and wanted this sketch to go on for the run, for the rest of my life actually.

David Mitchell really suits a flat cap and just-so tweeds, by the way, as do we all surely. In this garb, even when playing the grotesque Monsieur Garnier, greedy boss of a brilliant lab team which wants to do good rather than invent new twitches on the names for hair colouration, he looks even better than the dreamboat-imaginings of every 30something woman I know who wants him, which is all of them. But I won't go on about this because I once had the misfortune of being ordered by a friend to set them up on a date, and the setting-up supper ended with such exaggerated politesse on both his and my parts - grammar man, shoot me - that my buttocks haven't quite unclenched. Sorry again David.

That Mitchell and Webb Look, BBC Two, review

Michael Deacon reviews the first episode in the fourth series of David Mitchell and Robert Webb's sketch show.

If our relationship was a marriage it would be sexless

David Mitchell and Robert Webb are past pretending they're the best buddies on British telly. After 16 years together, the dynamic of their relationship has changed. If it was a marriage, it would be a sexless one by now they say.

That Mitchell & Webb Look episode 4.1 review

This opener for the fourth series was underwhelming, and it irritated me that David Mitchell and Robert Webb have chosen to stick with the Get Me Hennimore and Remain Indoors sketches, which both ran out of steam halfway through series 3. Still, as usual, Mitchell & Webb's work never patronizes its audience and doesn't rely on recycling jokes and catchphrases, so for that I'm grateful and will still be tuning in.

"I'm a sex champion, and I'd like a trophy," declares Robert Webb, setting the gloriously quirky tone for a sketch show which, at the start of its fourth series, seems to have lost none of its originality. David Mitchell is perfect as the conscientious small shopkeeper who gamely cobbles something together using a snooker player and a badminton figurine. The skits range in subject from the timeless to the contemporary, puncturing pomposity whether the subject is Caesar referring to himself in the third person (and getting very confused in the process) or Apple's cooler-than-thou advertising campaigns. Even the fact that the duo once promoted the Mac themselves hasn't detered them.

As ever with this duo, most famous for their roles in the deliciously dark Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, their verbal flair is evident. A generic 1970s-style company is called "Amalgamated Perforations", neatly skewering the meaninglessness of corporate language, while the head of a leading cosmetics laboratory berates his team of scientists for "wasting their time" on making genuine scientific breakthroughs. "Does perpetual motion do anything for the Sleek and Shiny range?" he demands huffily.

There's also a sketch about a couple who are forever having vicious arguments in front of their baby. The couple are played by Webb and his real-life wife, Abigail Burdess; although we presume the sketch has no autobiographical basis...

It's never easy sizing up a new series from David Mitchell and Robert Webb. In a previous series the pair performed a skit about the fact that critics invariably refer to sketch shows as "patchy"; tonight they play super-serious versions of themselves who dismiss the show as "a sneering pantomime of impudent crud". They've basically spiked your guns before you start. So I'll limit myself to this: the first episode is very funny at times, less funny at others, but all enjoyable. And if you've ever been annoyed by people pronouncing "H" as "haitch", you're in luck.

It's impossible not to be cheered up by the return of Mitchell and Webb. They're unfailingly funny, even if their material isn't.

So let's get the bad news out of the way. Two running sketches - Get Me Hennimore! and the British Emergency Broadcasting Service - return, although they've been pretty much sucked dry of comedy potential already. And the first sketch is probably the weakest - a good idea that peters out before it finds its punchline. I can only advise you to think of Robert Webb doing Flashdance in his black leotard to top up the giggle level during the weaker bits.

But there's a brilliant sketch set in the white-coated world of Laboratoire Garnier which also features David Mitchell as a Victorian northern mill owner.

And two more skits are tailor-made for Mitchell's pedantry. He's one of the few comedians who can make grammar hilarious. There's also a guest spot from Keeley Hawes - well, she is in everything else these days.

Video: Mitchell and Webb return with a new series

David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the award-winning comics behind Peep Show, speak to BBC Breakfast about the fourth series of That Mitchell and Webb Look.