Shooting Stars

Also back in front of an audience is the once-retired, always inspired Shooting Stars. After returning from a six-year break with last year's Christmas special, Vic and Bob will once more be summoning Donald Cox The Sweaty Fox as they're joined by Ulrika-ka-ka, Jack Dee and George Dawes himself, Matt Lucas, for a full new series in September. Uvavu!

On set with new Shooting Stars

Here's picture proof that our mole has been on set at the filming of the new series of Shooting Stars.

Shooting Stars 'back in autumn'

Surreal comedy quiz show Shooting Stars will return to the BBC this autumn, according to its stars Vic Reeves and Matt Lucas.

Reeves, 50 - real name Jim Moir - told the Daily Express the show would return with Ulrika Jonsson and Jack Dee as team hosts.

Iranu indeed: Shooting Stars is back

Reeves and Mortimer's anarchic game show Shooting Stars is to return for a full series on BBC2 following a one-off special last Christmas.

Vic and Bob will be reunited with the team captains from the Christmas special, Ulrika Johnson and newcomer Jack Dee, for the 6 x 30-minute series. Matt Lucas is also onboard as drumming man-baby George Dawes.

Vic Reeves Interview

The good news for fans of Shooting Stars is that, after the excellent ratings of the one-off Christmas special, it looks likely that the BBC will be commissioning another series. Vic says he's crossing his fingers, but it's 99 per cent in the bag.

We were big fans of the Vic Reeves / Bob Mortimer comedy 'quiz' show and, although this revival made us laugh, it didn't make us feel the need to march on the BBC demanding that it is reinstated to the schedules.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.

While we're on the subject of wilful stupidity, BBC2 was celebrating the legacy of Shooting Stars, the Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer game show. Shooting Stars: the Inside Story was an engaging retrospective, which made it clear how much fun everybody had at the time (and wasn't Ulrika pretty?). It made me annoyed at not having watched it more regularly. But then along came All New Shooting Stars, a strained attempt to revive the fun, with everybody looking older and tireder, and a depressing sense that entertaining the audience came a long way down the list of priorities.

Fifteen years ago, Reeves and Mortimer pulled the rug from under panel shows with a jerk that sent their legs in the air. All subsequent panel shows owe something to that Big Bang. Shooting Stars was juvenile, anarchic and fizzing with ricocheting invention. Matt Lucas in a pink romper suit looked as if he might at any moment burst out of his cocoon and become something huge and hungry. Which he did. Visiting celebrities took their lives in their hands. Larry Hagman looked like a man in a nightmare. Stephen Fry was lost in the wash. Johnny Vegas remembered Vic and Bob asking him, Are you drinking tonight? (a question with which he was all too familiar), and adding reassuringly, Because we are.

All New Shooting Stars, a one-off special, was an object lesson in never going back. Vic and Bob seemed like their own fathers. The only recognisable celebrity was Jack Dee, who, with a blue tit balanced on his head, stood nose to nose with an opera singer giving Nessun Dorma plenty of welly. Any trembling or precipitation of the tit would indicate failure and cost him a beautiful pillowcase. To watch Dee crack into a smile was joy enough for one night.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer first hosted their anarchic celebrity quiz show in 1993. The first of two programmes marking the show's 15th anniversary tonight is a documentary about the making of it - and, like Shooting Stars itself, the film is funny, eccentric and a little self-indulgent. Interspersed with interviews with some of the celebrities who found themselves subjected to Reeves' and Mortimer's particular kind of comedy (which veered from the surreal to the mildly offensive), the presenters themselves play various crew members reminiscing about their time working behind the scenes. This is a suitably unique way to contemplate a programme which Martine McCutcheon calls 'bizarre' and of which Larry Hagman said, "I've done some loony shows in my time but this is certainly the one."

Shooting Stars launched the career of Matt Lucas - who played scorekeeper George Dawes before he went on to global fame with David Walliams in Little Britain - and latterly also co-starred the often self-confessedly drunken comic Johnny Vegas.