Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 8:33 pm Post subject: Mitchell and Webb
Peeping In America
A US version of Peep Show could be in the works. While the Channel 4 comedy starring David Mitchell & Robert Webb is currently on its fourth series, it seems that American cable network Spike TV is reported to have done a deal with a company called Pangea to develop an American version with UK company Objective Productions, who make the original. It is also reported that Curb Your Enthusiasm executive producer Robert Weide is on board as writer and director.
Meanwhile the British version has already had a fifth series commissioned and is currently doing the rounds on BBC America in the US.
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I reckon this could work quite well as it's the first-person approach that makes this show stand out and that's relatively easily emulated, and with the guy from Curb involved I'm sure it could be worth a look.
Who are Mitchell & Webb? By JANE FRYER
25th October 2007
www.dailymail.co.uk
David Mitchell and Robert Webb are bickering. Not about their sketch show, or their award winning sitcom Peep Show, or who's the funniest, or even whether or not it was a good idea to star in the recent Apple Mac adverts that caused such a furore in the Press. No. Britain's favourite comedians are arguing over who was the thinnest when they first met at Cambridge, 14 years ago.
"I was a second year and on the Footlights committee, so I was terribly cool and experienced," says Rob, now 35, of the famous university comedy group, which launched the careers of John Cleese, Stephen Fry, Sacha Baron Cohen and Emma Thompson. "And David was just a wee tiny first year - very green and naive and desperate to go mad and get drunk and.. . "Very, very thin," cuts in David, 33. "Thin-ner." says Rob. "No, thin. Not thinner. I was properly thin. Skinny even." "Yeah, but not as skinny as I was. I looked like I was dying, for God's sake. If we were having a skinny-off, I'd have trounced you. You could barely see me."
Whatever. It's not something they need worry about today. Not because either of them is massively fat - though David is nicely padded ("I like to consider myself plump"), but because unless you've had your head in a tub of sand for the last year or so, you can't fail to have noticed them.
They're everywhere. On telly - they've just recorded the fourth series of Peep Show. On tour and DVD - with the Bafta-winning That Mitchell and Webb Look, which they write themselves. At the movies - starring in their first feature film, Magicians. They're even in the ad breaks, for God' sake, pretending to be computers. And on top of all that, David pops up cheerily on countless quiz shows and Rob likes taking his clothes off ("I've been a bit of a freelance nudist") most notably as a naturist in British comedy Confetti.
As laid-back Rob puts it with a big happy smile: "Things have gone rather lovely' on the career front of late." "Yes, which leaves us with the constant nervous fear that it's all going to go pearshaped and we'll be those blokes who used to be on the telly,' chips in David, characteristically downbeat.
It all kicked off with Peep Show - written specially for them by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain - which follows the sad lives of dysfunctional flatmates Mark, a neurotic, prematurely middle-aged loan manager, who looks like he's been dressed by his maiden aunt, and Jeremy, or Jez, a selfish, self-obsessed serial womaniser who thinks he's cool, but isn't. It won a British Comedy Award, has been heralded the best thing on television by Ricky Gervais and a fifth series is in the pipeline.
"I think the reason it works has a lot to do with just being honest about what your life is like," says David, "so it's quite consoling if you feel ever so slightly isolated, or not quite in the mainstream, or a complete loser. . . to see Mark and Jeremy doing considerably worse."
It is also oddly claustrophobic to watch - shot from each character's point of view, complete with internal dialogue - and very fiddly to film. Which can have it's upsides. "The sex scenes are easier because you're normally having sex with a camera - or, actually, a nice and very hardworking cameraman called Nick," says Rob. "So it's much less embarrassing than kissing an actor," says David. "Or actress. .." adds Rob, helpfully.
Rob and David are the classic Odd Couple, on and off screen. The characters are based on themselves, although in massive exaggeration. Which means that in the flesh they are oddly familiar - so David/Mark is all very clean, neatly parted hair, crisp slacks and anxieties and Rob/Jez is lolling about in his chair, rolling his eyes a lot and shooting outside for a fag. The latter describes their relationship as 'a sexless marriage, complete with tetchy silences. Or, as David puts it: "We sort of annoy each other, but we try not to address it."
Rob, a grammar school boy who grew up in Lincolnshire, claims to be the "cooler one, because I used to have an earring," and is married to stand-up comedienne and actress Abigail Burdess (David was best man). Meanwhile David, like the characters he plays, is a terrible worrier - he has a tendency to lock and unlock the door five or six times before he can leave home - has no interest in either fashion or music and has been single for "ever so long".
Even his background - son of two Oxford lecturers, public school, reading history at Peterhouse college - seems to fit the stereotype of the repressed, middleclass nerd. But neither is remotely grand and both are warm, friendly, incredibly polite and strangely attractive. They both live in Kilburn, North London - Rob and Abigail in a "posh two-bed garden flat with a shed", David shares the ex-council flat he bought more than six years ago with an old university mate.
"I'd like somewhere bigger, but I hate the thought of organising it. I also have a terrible fear that the moment I buy somewhere more expensive, the house prices will crash . . . I don't relish new challenges."
So, for the moment, their office and creative HQ - two chairs, a desk and a computer where they write their sketch show - will stay where it has been for the past decade, in David's bedroom. "It'd be nice, one day, for it to be a bit further from my bed. But it seems to work. We sit side by side in front of the computer. We basically improvise at each other and then write down the best bits.'
Is there any hierarchy? "No," says Rob, quickly. Any sense of my seniority evaporated when it turned out I couldn't type." And what if one of them isn't having a funny day? "We're still very polite to each other," says David. "It doesn't really help to say: 'Don't be so bloody stupid - that's utter rubbish', even if it is. And I won't refuse to type something that Rob likes and I don't, though, of course, I'll make clear I don't like it and am already looking for an opportunity to replace it."
Occasionally, they decamp to their local pub - Adnams Broadside bitter for David, and Stella and a packet of Marlboro Lights for Rob. "It's not a great idea," says Rob. "Dialogue is rubbish after a couple of pints - sloppy or overwritten. But being a bit drunk is good for ideas."
But while they spend their days sitting in David's bedroom, they've made a conscious and cautious decision to stop socialising as much, to protect their creative relationship. "I think we both sort of imagine what would happen now if we had 'the row'," says Rob. "I think we wouldn't have it," says David, "but I also think we'd both be fine as jobbing actors." "Anyway,' says Rob. "We've got a lot of mutual friends from university, but we try not to see so much of each other out of work, because we do need time apart. Having said that, we did go on holiday together - with some other friends - and we were both thinking: 'We spend all this time together in his bedroom, now I'm going on holiday with this guy.' "
And now? "We're still mates," says Rob. "But we don't sob over each other." "I wouldn't sob over anyone,' says David, again conforming to his buttoned-up stereotype. "And we don't talk about important things or relationships. well, only very occasionally, when very drunk, but not as policy."
And have they ever lived together, a la Mark and Jeremy? "Not officially. David was living with my ex-girlfriend for a while and I was always hanging around. We'd write for a bit, and then walk over to the other bit of the room where the telly was. Not a good idea. But we mustn't complain - we're doing the job we've always wanted to and it's brilliant."
It hasn't always been quite so brilliant. They battled for nearly a decade to make it big. "Our meeting story wasn't electricity and sparks, but at the end of David's first year I suggested we do a two-man show," says Rob. "Which was a big success," finishes David. "So a couple of years later, we took it to Edinburgh. Which is great fun as a student, but when you're aspiring to make a living from it and it's 11 o'clock in the morning and there are two people in the audience, and they're only there because they couldn't get into anything else, and the lines you thought were funny just aren't, then it's soul destroying."
They didn't take off at Edinburgh straight away, but pressed on, working as ushers at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, West London, to help pay the bills. "It was a war of attrition," says Rob, rolling his eyes and lolling in his usual relaxed pose. "Every year we'd say to ourselves, well, this time last year we were doing a bit worse. So every year there was a sense of progress."
They eventually won the coveted Perrier Award at Edinburgh in 1997, and their trajectory in recent years is what every comedian dreams of. But, even so, not everything has gone perfectly. While audiences at their nationwide live tour were enthusiastic, reviews were less so. Their big-screen debut in the Magicians - in which they play two warring magicians, one of whom suspects the other of deliberately killing his wife on stage during a trick - was declared by one critic to be, "not as bad as you might expect".
And then there was all that furore over the Apple Mac campaign in which David plays a hopeless PC and Webb trumps him as a cool Mac - and for which they were accused of selling out in "an act of grave betrayal" and described as "worse than not funny". So. . . did they um and ah about doing it? Rob looks at me as if I've gone mad. David's eyes go a bit poppy. "You're joking, right? It was a no brainer - a lot of money for not much work. We nearly took their arm off."
And the criticism they got? "It was baffling. We just didn't get it - it was a sort of 'Comedian Uses Skills To Earn A Living, shocker,'" says Rob. "And we'd done ads before. Loads of people have." Suddenly they're all bristly and businesslike. Even Rob's sitting up straight. "But maybe with comedy, and particularly shows like Peep Show, people like to feel they've discovered it themselves and don't like the idea that it has a wider appeal and that a large company might have noticed it," says David, and he's off. "But that's not our problem. If anyone watching telly thinks it's a solo experience, they're in for a shock. I don't see what's immoral about it. It's only computers, it's not like we're helping to flog a killing machine."
Oh dear. I rather wish I hadn't raised it. They're not so much fun when they're ruffled and, after all, why shouldn't they reap their success - they've worked hard enough for it. So we move briskly onto safer ground, hobbies and interests. Both look horrified when I mention sport. "I read a bit, and potter, but I don't have much time," says David. "I don't own any records at all and, apparently, there's something odd about that. I used to play a bit of tennis and I like going to the cinema. Oh God, I think I've basically become a man of no interests."
So has fame and fortune changed their lifestyles at all? "Not really," says David almost apologetically. Lots of people recognise us, but we don't get mobbed and we don't need body guards. People do come up to us, but they're usually nice."
"We get quite a bit of fanmail," says Rob. "Mine is more sensitive boys anxious about boy things, rather than predatory women, but I've made it very clear I'm married. But David's available. Extremely available. In fact, when we were on tour, he was sent an enormous pair of women's knickers, but didn't seem very excited about them."
"Plump" David might make an unlikely sex symbol, but he does get women into a bit of a lather. The pair's MySpace page is awash with messages from girls called Rachel and Kellie and Jessica, offering an arm or a leg for a night in the sack with him and listing the unspeakable things they want to do to him in bed. Which, try as I might, I just can't bring myself to mention to him. It somehow feels inappropriate - like asking your parents about their sex life.
So what of the future - rumour has it Fox has bought the rights to Peep Show - does Hollywood beckon? "Oh no!" exclaims David. "To do all that, we'd have to emigrate and I don't think I could cope being that far from home. "And I can't be bothered to get my teeth and hair fixed," says Rob. "LA would be hopeless for me in any event," adds David, "because of course I can't drive."
And with that, we make our farewells - David all polite and formal, smoothing down his slacks with one hand as he stands, Rob with a wink and a smile as he darts out for a fag and me suddenly sad that they're not my real friends. Because, while with the best will in the world, neither of them are exactly thin, you'd struggle to meet two more likeable, engaging, refreshingly low-key stars.
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You can get all the episodes from series 1 at the link below.
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