British Comedy Guide
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Peep Show. Jeremy Usbourne (Robert Webb). Copyright: Objective Productions
Robert Webb

Robert Webb

  • 52 years old
  • English
  • Actor and writer

Press clippings Page 36

Following in the footsteps of Kevin Bishop's cringe-fest, Peep Show is back to remind us (and Channel 4) what TV comedy is all about. With Mark and Jez still co-habiting in Croydon and drowning in each other's apathy, it's clear not much has changed (and of course we wouldn't want it any other way). Mark gets promoted and celebrates by getting a new boiler; and also gets Jez a job at his office, providing a platform for a rather brilliant quote regarding a work / porn incident. One of these idiots might be the father of Sophie's baby (anyone else secretly hoping it's Super Hans?). Recently Robert Webb told us that the thing that gets shouted at him most is "Oi, Peep Show". He sighed. But everyone, including him, knows this is the best thing they've ever done by a country mile. Lovely.

TV Bite, 18th September 2009

Webb 'delighted' with new Peep Show

Robert Webb has claimed that the new series of Peep Show is the best yet.

Dan French, Digital Spy, 18th September 2009

The return of one of the finest ever sitcoms in the history of the world ever - fact! Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's darkly comical flat share work of genius starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb is on tip top form as ever. Considering it's on its sixth series, that's no mean feat. Brilliant, inspired stuff!

Mark Wright, The Stage, 18th September 2009

Winning Losers

Paternity muddles, brainwashing cults and a failure to find 'the one': things didn't work out as planned for Mark and Jez in the last series of Peep Show. So what fresh humiliation awaits this time? Grace Dent joins them on set.

Grace Dent, The Guardian, 12th September 2009

David Mitchell and Robert Webb on Peep Show: interview

The writing duo behind Channel 4's popular cult sitcom Peep Show talk about the genesis of their Bafta award-winning show.

Michael Deacon, The Telegraph, 12th September 2009

Peep Show - They're still worth spying on

Six series on and Mark and Jeremy are the same old losers, living in one another's pockets. That's the secret of Peep Show's success, David Mitchell and Robert Webb tell James Rampton.

James Rampton, The Independent, 11th September 2009

Interview: David Mitchell, Robert Webb ('Peep Show')

With a pair of CVs covering the likes of Peep Show, Magicians and That Mitchell And Webb Look, David Mitchell and Robert Webb have officially cemented themselves as comedy connoisseurs. But with Peep Show series six now upon us - and with a seventh already on the way - are they getting tired of Mark and Jez? And how much longer can the show go on? We caught up with the chaps themselves to find out.

Dan French, Digital Spy, 11th September 2009

How vividly we remember when and where we hear special things on the radio, staying in a car to hear the end of a football match, being in a garden and braving hay fever not to miss a word of a play. Six Augusts ago I remember walking round the Italian Garden in Hyde Park, listening to the very first episode of That Mitchell and Webb Sound and laughing so much my glasses steamed up and I couldn't see the fountains.

They were just starting off in Channel 4's Peep Show then but had been around on the comedy scene long enough to have established their act and attracted the BBC. Radio's tiny cheques (but careful fostering) helped them to a BBC TV series. As with Dead Ringers, however, radio fans who followed them found the same jokes but with pictures, slower, still funny but not exactly fresh. Last Tuesday evening they began their fourth Radio 4 series and it was simply brilliant.

Twelve sketches, written by an encyclopaedic list of writers, lit up the air. Caesar, with a spin doctor. The iReckon, a device to enjoy the thoughts you want in the order that suits you. A reprimand to employees for using their extraterrestrial portal as a dustbin ("What must the aliens think of us?"). A parody of an interview where there's nothing to say but they won't be let go until they say what the producer wants. Parodies of TV ads and BBC formats. A look forward to 2040 and Sky BBC12. Their rapport with the studio audience is remarkable, their supporting cast is first-rate. Will I mind if all these jokes turn up again on television? Not really. If it were the other way round, TV first, I would.

Gillian Reynolds, The Telegraph, 1st September 2009

Peep Show? Brilliant. David Mitchell on any of the roughly 795 radio and TV panel games he's adorned with his presence? National treasure-in-waiting. But if his reputation rested on his TV sketch shows with Robert Webb, the two of them might well be known as the Anna Kournikovas of comedy: famous, but useless at the thing they're famous for.

The problem with the sketches in That Mitchell and Webb Sound (which the lads mostly write), as opposed to Peep Show (which they mostly don't) is that they're clever but not very funny, a slight handicap for a comedy programme. Each situation is replete with comic possibilities and progresses with savage twists of absurdity. It should be drop-dead hilarious. It's the kind of thing, though, you watch with an expectant grin - but no belly laughs.

So I listened to the new series of the radio version with some trepidation, but although not everything was a palpable hit, there was enough to be going on with. Some of the ideas were spot-on, such as the orthopaedic suppliers with an inter-dimensional portal on the shop floor ("gentlemen, the stargate is not a bin"), or the iReckon, Apple's new gadget ("I can download all my thoughts from the internet!"). And Caesar being coached in referring to himself in the third person was pure The Two Ronnies.

Chris Maume, The Independent, 30th August 2009

Radio Review: That Mitchell and Webb Sound

Mitchell and Webb are back on the airwaves, and very funny with it, says Elisabeth Mahoney.

Elisabeth Mahoney, The Guardian, 26th August 2009

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