David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s new Channel 4 sketch show Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping has been out for a few days now, leaving time for the dust to settle and the reviews to roll in.
The follow-up to the 2000s sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look comes four years after the Peep Show duo’s last project, the sitcom Back, and during a time when there haven’t been many new sketch shows on TV for ages.
Since the first episode aired last Friday (September 5) and the whole season dropped on Channel 4’s streaming service, fans have been leaving their thoughts on IMDb — and they’re mixed.
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The show, which also stars Taskmaster’s Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Stevie Martin, has 271 user scores and 36 user reviews on the site, with an average score of 5.4 out of 10. Here’s what some of the fan reviews have said.
Channel 4
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“Some sketches are a bit of a miss and they often go on a little too long, but overall there are some good laughs and it’s great to see Mitchell and Webb back doing some good work with a sketch show in 2025,” reads a 7/10 write-up.
Another more positive review, titled “Great to have them back,” gave the show 10/10 and stated: “People comparing this to Peep Show is like comparing cat food to streak, just because it has some of the same ingredient doesn’t make it the same!! A little hit and miss (much like there previous sketch show) But still good.”
A less enthusiastic reviewer wrote: “Most scenes drag, directionless and repetitively, rarely ever stumbling into something resembling a joke, let alone effective satire,” while another called it “excruciatingly bad”. Ouch.
“80% miss, 20% hit. That ratio speaks for itself,” a further fan stated. “This is a very poorly written comedy sketch show. Each episode has 5 or 6 skippable sketches and one or two that raised a small smile, or at least feel neatly observed. Too many sketches are paper thin premises which then outstay their welcome by three or four minutes.”
Channel 4
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A lot of fans have particular ire for the Sweary Aussie Drama sketch from the first episode, which is a parody sketch filled to the brim with expletives.
“It felt like sometimes saying swear words loudly was somehow supposed to be a joke in itself,” one fan said, while another wrote: “They seemed to cover for the lack of jokes by swearing excessively”.
When the show was announced, Mitchell and Webb both said in a statement that a sketch show is “the trickiest genre of comedy” and they hoped that they were “not about to give British TV comedy a final lethal nudge into the abyss”.
Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping airs Friday nights on Channel 4, with the whole season available to stream now on the Channel 4 service.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.