Back

In 2015 Channel 4’s longest running sitcom Peep Show ended. With its point-of-view filming and emphasis on internal monologue it revolutionised the genre. Starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the two played Mark and Jez, warring flatmates that hated and needed one another in equal measure. Like Steptoe and Son for a modern generation, the pair live the squalid life of cheap lager, expensive crisps and self-loathing. Mark, a white-collar worker, is ostensibly more moral than Jeremy; although darkness lies beneath. Jez, a work-shy freeloader, lives like the world owes him something- despite never once contributing anything to it. The two are interdependent: Jez needs Mark to sustain his unemployed existence, and Mark needs Jez to maintain his social superiority. Like the medieval court, Jez plays the fool to Mark's nobleman: the fact that Jez frequently makes jokes at his friend's expense, perversely makes him master. Throughout the run, the pair become increasingly amoral, dragging one another down in a way that only bad friends can. At the show’s conclusion, Mark is still sitting alongside Jeremy, contemplating how to get rid of him: a pox he’s been scratching for ten years, one that shows no signs of abating.

Jez and Mark.

Fans of the show then were upset when its creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong called it a day. The peerless repartee between Mitchell and Webb had been confined to the museum of sitcom, only to be dusted off for retrospective viewing on 40D. Fear not though, because the boys are back, albeit in a different guise- but back nonetheless. To paraphrase ACDC, they’re back in Back: a new Channel 4 sitcom written by Simon Blackwell.  

Now Blackwell is a name I hadn’t heard of before. Normally, I keep an eye out for writing credits because I always feel writers – quite wrongly – have lesser status than actors. But Blackwell was a name I didn’t recognise. I should have because he has written episodes for Peep Show, The Thick of It and Veep ­­­- that's quite a CV.

In Back he’s created a sitcom where Mitchell and Webb resume their roles of uptight loser and immoral bully, only in the less oppressive setting of a village pub. At the start, Andrew (Webb) is giving advice to a taxi driver about relationships: initially, it appears he's advising the man on how to reconnect with his wife; this though is a pull-back and reveal. Moments later, we find Andrew is the devil on the driver’s shoulder, invoking him to cheat on his spouse with a younger woman. Stephen (Mitchell) meanwhile is in town, gathering groceries for his father’s wake: he’s bought sausage rolls – one up from the economy range – ensuring his dad’s buffet will have adequate catering. Andrew is en route because as a once-upon-a-time fostered child of the family, he wants to pay his respects. With the taxi ride indicating malevolence though, we’re not sure of what Andrew’s motivation is. For instance: why, when he only stayed with the family for a few months, does he insist on calling Stephen’s father “dad,” ? How come, if dad meant so much to him, he's only just turned up? Why is he muscling in on their dad's pub?

Stephen and Andrew.

Andrew is the ghost of Banquo, a threat to the dead man’s heir. His appearance feels like a haunting, forcing Stephen to confront his childhood. Whilst Andrew recalls their days together in euphoric technicolour, Stephen perceives them in drab monochrome. Director Ben Palmer does an excellent job in splicing the past and the present, allowing us to see how these memories diverge. Fans of the excellent Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place will also be happy to see Matthew Holness star as “dad” in these pivotal hallucinations.

In terms of the writing, it has the articulacy you would expect from a person that has penned the best of 

sitcom. Stellar lines of dialogue frequently permeate the programme. 

When Stephen's sister Caz is trying to impress Andrew by boasting about the local music 

festival, she effuses, “It’s got four stages.” Stephen’s pithy aside? “Like cancer.”  As well as brevity, 

Blackwell can do baroque. With the will leaving Andrew with  5% of the pub, he pushes through 

modernisation plans. Plans that lead to an increase in footfall and five-star TripAdvisor reviews. 

This worries the paranoid Stephen: they’ve been a three-star  pub for years, what are people 

going to think when they’re suddenly getting critical acclaim? His response is 

beautifully articulate: 

Seriously, you don't stick your head above the parapet with the TripAdvisor guys because you will call down a tsunami of shit. A sudden flurry of five-star reviews, they get suspicious, send the black-ops reviewers in, there's a string of zero-star write-ups and then you're fucked. It happened to The Plough in Harescombe, they flew too close to the sun.

Given that the BBC have been airing their recent sitcom pilots on Wednesday and Friday, and Jack Dee’s Bad Move has just seen the ITV light of day, there is a surfeit of comedy at present. Out of all of the new offerings, however, Back is the best by some distance. It isn’t just a worthy successor to Peep Show, but a great comedy in its own right. Bain and Armstrong may have called last orders on Mitchell and Webb’s biggest hit, but in Simon Blackwell they have a landlord worth every bit of their predecessors. Here’s hoping that when the sitcom ends, Channel 4 raise their glasses and call, “Same again.”

Back is on Wednesday, Channel 4 at 10pm. Past episodes are available on 4OD.