House Of Fools

Michael Deacon: on Vic and Bob and their crazy new show

As the credits rolled at the end of House of Fools (Tuesday, BBC Two), I noticed something odd. Very odd. And it's been puzzling me ever since. The programme had a Script Editor.

Everyone knows what they're getting with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, whose new comedy House of Fools - an absurdist spoof of 70s sitcoms played to a fashionably live audience - kicked off on BBC2. Would Bob get the peace and quiet he needed to invite his date round to watch Conan the Barbarian on TV? Or would Vic get stuck in a hole drilled through the wall to next door while their booming-voiced friend Beef (crazy Matt Berry in a role familiar to that seen in his recent Toast of London) defecated in a cereal box? Amid the chaos and rude slapstick there was much pleasing drollness, not least Bob's cri de coeur at Vic's promise to change his ways: "You can't change, you're fully realised."

The front room setting for almost all the action was the messiest, most fire hazard-ish, most tinned-pineapples-next-to-gas-masks collection of junk since Steptoe And Son. Even the set-up - one of the occupants trying to break out of this foosty male world to meet members of the opposite sex, only to be thwarted by his co-habitee - reminded me of at least half the episodes of Albert/Harold malarkey in my treasured boxset. This was House Of Fools, the return of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, welcome any time but especially last week.

It's Bob's house, and Vic's his lodger, which strictly speaking makes them the Hugh And I of right now. I imagine that in every instalment Bob will try to evict Vic, along with his gubbins, and fail. "General fannying about and whimbrelling," Bob will mutter. Whimbrelling? As I write, there are a mere seven mentions of the word in the whole of cyberspace, with five claiming Reeves and Mortimer have added a brand new word to the language. Not quite true: the other two mentions state that whimbrelling is the high-pitched call of the whimbrel, the wading bird. Then Vic will promise to mend his slovenly ways, only for Bob to sigh: "You can't change; you're fully realised." A running gag, then, or lying-down one. But that's all right: every sitcom needs one. And the tremendous advantage House Of Fools has over many is that everyone who wanders into the front room must sing a song of introduction.

The other fools include Bob's Norwegian son, randy cucumber-wielding Julie who lives next door, an ex-con called Bosh, and Beef played by Matt Berry, hot from Toast Of London, a ludicrous lothario in a cravat. "I travel this land removing my pants while making love to African ladies," warbled Beef.

House Of Fools is what in comedy used to be called surreal, before the word got appropriated by sportsmen at the London Olympics to describe the sensation of winning. Vic and Bob have just reclaimed it, and a good thing too.

House of Fools - TV review

It's good to be back in Vic and Bob's glorious snow globe of subversive lunacy.

House Of Fools, BBC Two, review

Not every gag hit the mark but if one didn't, another soon came along.

Who doesn't need a good wimbrel around the madcap edges of life every now and again? I didn't know I'd forgotten how good Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer could be until House Of Fools came up and slapped me round the kippers with its sheer intoxicating daftness.

The best thing is that, while middle-aged men pratting about like students and cracking gags involving body parts could easily come across as tragic, it just seems appropriately Vic and Bob, like the past 20 years never happened. Just when I was about to send my pointy stick off for recycling, Reeves and Mortimer got good again.

Well, they've never actually been bad, but House Of Fools revealed how they footled around with quiz shows for far too long. I know it's a minority view but I was glad they axed Shooting Stars, it was a show rapidly disappearing down its own plughole.

Sticking with aquatic imagery, you could take a bubble bath in Vic and Bob's luxuriant language, a surreal Jacuzzi of absurdity, filth, poetry and celebrity invocations, often in the same sentence. That the name Sandi Toksvig played a pivotal plot role in episode one gives you the drift.

Oh, yes, plot. For what it's worth, it's poor old Bob being beset by clueless chumps and the odd offspring who clutter up his house and his love life. Mortimer is the perfect fall guy, forever fiddling with his maverick toupee while Reeves gets wedged between walls and has his bits tortured. Not forgetting Matt (Toast) Berry dressed as a regency fop and rolling fol-de-rols round his tongue.

House Of Fools revels in references to forensic pets and psychic cutlery, and comes with bizarrely erotic animated sequences. In one, Vic demonstrated an unusual way of egesting a television.

And there are questions you won't hear anywhere else: 'Why is it always you that suffers from sausage drift?' Yes, they're back.

House of Fools, BBC2 - TV review

It's The Young Ones with M&S V-necks as odd couple's surreal laughs hit home.

House of Fools, BBC Two

Much of it is puerile, but no less funny for that, while other gags are just lame.

House Of Fools review

Maybe I've simply outgrown Vic & Bob's infantile antics, or their style of bonkers comedy just doesn't feel as revolutionary as it did when I was a teen.

Despite taking on everything from light entertainment to supernatural primetime drama, it's taken until 2014 for absurdist comedy figureheads Reeves & Mortimer to land their own sitcom. The tissue-thin plot involves Bob's suburban bliss being continually ruined by cohort Vic, not least in this opener where Vic provides Bob with some dating advice. Despite 1992 sitcom pilot The Weekenders being arguably their finest half-hour, dial down expectations somewhat here. That said, flashes of whimsy provide succour for the faithful.