David Mitchell (I)

As we return for the fifth series of this engagingly filthy comedy, Mark (David Mitchell) is getting drunk and maudlin on wedding champagne as his flatmate Jeremy (Robert Webb) urges him to go out on a double-date: Beggars can't be choosers, she's an actual woman.

Mark - remember, this is a man who once based his romantic strategy on the Siege of Stalingrad - arms himself with a copy of the Friends of the British Museum magazine and goes forth again to search for love...

I adore Peep Show and I adore Mark and Jeremy, an amiable pair of misfits trapped in a squalid, mutually destructive friendship. Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's script is packed with the kind of quotable funny lines that should be on T-shirts, and Mitchell and Webb are both just marvellous.

Interview with David Mitchell and Robert Webb

The Telegraph interviewed David Mitchell and Robert Webb in the build up to the second series of the show.

That Mitchell and Webb Look is an uproarious sketch series from the fine folks at BBC America that, unlike most of its ilk, hits far more home runs than groundouts. Written and performed primarily by the comedic duo of Robert Webb and David Mitchell, it's a cleverly cheeky pastiche of offbeat characters and biting wit that's rife with dead-on social commentary.

I wonder if David Mitchell and Robert Webb have many duppy to feed. They're certainly working hard: Peep Show, plus a film, Magicians, and those awful Apple Mac adverts (the duppies could have gorged themselves on that cheque). And now another series of That Mitchell and Webb Sound. Like all their work, I think I won't really like it and then find myself tuning in and laughing like a drain. It's always at the same thing, which is the chubby uncool feller (is he Mitchell? Or Webb?) getting angry. This week he lost his rag about footie fans becoming too immersed in the game, deciding to do the same with Raiders of the Lost Ark. 'At the end we're tied to a stake in the ground, and you lot open the Ark of the Covenant, and the wrath of God comes out and melts your face,' he snarled. Said by Chubby, this was hilarious.

A brand new game for Friday nights: spot Joanna Lumley. She's absolutely unrecognisable as a bonkers bicycling pensioner in Jennifer Saunders' gentle rural comedy set in Clatterford in Devon - one of those imaginary villages where you can't step out of your cottage without tripping over a dozen or so gurning eccentrics.

But what this lacks in laughs it makes up for in star names. As well as Saunders playing a rich, horsey, friend of Madonna-type, there's Pauline McLynn from Father Ted, Sally Phillips from Smack The Pony, Maggie Steed as the leader of the Women's Guild, a bubble-permed Dawn French as the village idiot, and David Mitchell of That Mitchell And Webb Look.

The piece was actually written for Sue Johnston who plays Sal Vine, the practice nurse whose doctor husband rather thoughtlessly keels over and dies.

Perhaps because of the huge cast, and the way slapstick comedy runs alongside sadness, this first episode feels like a patchwork quilt knocked up from leftover wool.

But some scenes, such as when Sal is visited by a hopeless grief counsellor (the brilliant Rosie Cavaliero) suggest it might be worth giving it a chance to find its feet.

The omens are good for this new Friday-night comedy: it's packed with talent - including Joanna Lumley, Sue Johnston, David Mitchell, Pauline McLynn, Dawn French and Sally Phillips. It's also written by Jennifer Saunders, whose flappywomen comedy formula may not be universally popular, but it has a devoted following among viewers.

But, my goodness, it's hard to find laugh-out-loud moments in this first episode - or even smile-politely ones even though the setting of the action should inspire them: a small Devon village characterised by League of Gentlemenly oddness.

Peep Show funny men David Mitchell and Robert Webb remind us that they're not just great comic actors but gifted writers as well with this new sketch show that's been adapted seamlessly from Radio 4's ]That Mitchell and Webb Sound].

David Mitchell and Robert Webb have put together a wonderful radio comedy programme of satirical sketches. The show is a relativly quick-fire montage of sketches, which manages to be topical while not directly impersonating or parodying any specific figures, in the same way the shows such as Dead Ringers do.