Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing

Gone Fishing has been the perfect antidote to bleak TV

You might not have thought that two ageing comedians bumbling around Britain in their waders would make for one of the surprise TV highlights of 2018. But Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing definitely has been.

Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing review

What is more important than friendship and health? Not a lot as far as I can tell.

The utter joy of Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing

Don't waste time, seek it out and I'm sure you'll fall under its spell as I have.

This week finds the comedians in Dorset, on the trail of the hardest-fighting fish that swims in British waters: the sea trout. Mortimer arrives late to find Whitehouse singing to the trout from his dinghy; after a while the pair head off to try to lure sea bass from a boat off the Needles.

Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer interview

Over suet pudding at London's oldest restaurant, the comedians discuss fishing, heart surgery, and staying in touch with their inner child.

The warming series continues as the comedians wend further along the River Wensum, catching the odd sprat, exchanging anecdotes - including one involving Chaka Khan - and giving vent to their anxiety about the onset of age. Tonight, they stay in a disused train station and Paul has a makeover to recapture his lost youth.

Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, episode 4, review

One of summer's surprise TV treats.

Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (BBC Two)

It's taken me three weeks to write this review because I wanted to give Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing a chance to bed in. Three weeks on, I really, really, really want to like it more.

Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is getting into its stride, or at least getting into its amiably grouchy amble. The two friends, both with heart problems, drive around England: Bob arranges bunks and food, and Paul tries to teach Bob to fish. Not that unsuccessfully, if the beast of a barbel Bob netted this week was any indication. Along the waters they gas away: about death and music and miscellany; of cabbages and kings. It's reminiscent obviously of The Trip, but less mean; I was more reminded of the much-missed Detectorists, and truly England has seldom looked so beguilingly tranquil - long lazy shots of geese in early mists over the Wye, set to the likes of Liszt, Bach and Bellini, which seem somehow to have been written precisely for that particular Arcadia.

If the opening episode of Bob and Paul's angling amble felt downbeat, this episode's opening ruminations on tombstone inscriptions might not immediately lighten the mood. And yet, as talk turns from the funereal to the finer points of fishing, the camaraderie continues to appeal.