Stevie Martin, who made a splash in the last series of Taskmaster, is one of the bright young things teaming up with David Mitchell and Robert Webb for their new Channel 4 sketch show, Mitchell And Webb Are Not Helping.
The show sees Mitchell and Webb supported by Martin, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lara Ricote, Stevie Martin and Krystal Evans, plus a dynamic team of established and upcoming comic writers.
Mitchell And Webb Are Not Helping comes to Channel 4 from September 5.
Read an interview with David Mitchell here.
Read an interview with Stevie Martin below
How did you come to be involved in Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping?
I've been in it since the very beginning. Gareth, the producer, had seen my sketches online and asked if I’d like to write on a pilot with Mitchell & Webb, and then read it out in front of a small audience at Soho Theatre as a test run. I didn’t even have to audition!
I’m really excited about the series. I'd be excited even if I wasn't in it, so that's an added bit of fun. I'm a massive fan of Mitchell & Webb. Working with them on the pilot, then in the writers’ rooms for the full series, was only matched by actually being on set with them and having them in costume saying my words back at me. Now that it’s edited and ready to go out, seeing myself in the sketches with them genuinely makes me feel light-headed.
What do you love about them?
I love how their humour is very particular. Sometimes you can't really explain why something just gets you, but I really like their initial premise which is that they always want to be silly and funny rather than preaching. They will always go for the stupidest, most silly, most fun thing first. That's the driving force – pure comedy.
I also have a soft spot for their personalities – you're not just watching two blank canvases perform sketches: you're watching David Mitchell and Robert Webb play those parts. David is usually the clever, pedantic one, which he’s so good at, and Rob is so perfect at swearing and being cheeky and horribly rude. It was such a joy to watch them do the thing that they do the best.
As a fan, was it intimidating to work with them?
During the pilot I was fan-girling and saying stupid things. I told David that I loved Luther and he was so nice about it and said, “But I think you might mean Ludwig.”
I found the first week quite hard because I could see how good they were, and I was nervous, and I really wanted to do a good job. The first sketch I filmed was with David and Rob and it was very wordy – we're all saying a repetition of similar sentences –and of course they were word-perfect and I was terrified and got quite flustered and it was boiling hot. Afterwards I had to take a minute to walk around and pull myself together.
The next one was just Rob and I, where I had a gigantic monologue, and I was like, “I can't”, because there was this added layer of, “it's them”. I couldn't believe I was on set with them, and I couldn't focus my brain because I was so scared of them, thinking I wasn't good enough.
But I did it, and I figured out a different way to learn lines that helped, and then I realised they were really nice and not at all scary. At one point David kindly said, “You know what? I reckon you can do that again, and you can nail that,” and I did nail it. Eventually I relaxed and we were laughing and joking and there was no pressure.
I think maybe all four of us – me, Kiell, Lara and Krystal – felt that at some point, because we really wanted to hit a standard, and it's easy to get in in your own head in that situation.
What were they like to work with once you relaxed?
What I love most about working with them is that it's not an act: they are like that. David and Rob are incredibly self-deprecating, and they're incredibly aware of not wanting to be overlords that shoot down ideas. There are at least two sketches written by other people which David and Rob weren’t really sure about at first. We did a read-through in front of Channel 4 and these particular sketches went down really well, so they went in the show, which I thought was a baller move. Even while we were filming one of them, David admitted that he still doesn't really get why it’s funny. It’s quite un-David Mitchell as a sketch but it's really in keeping with the show, so I loved that they were open to including that.
David's not really on Instagram or online, so there are some riffs in the writers’ room sketches with us explaining things to them – particularly David – like, what is WhatsApp and that sort of thing. They said they didn't want the sketch show to feel completely nostalgic and set in their world, because their world is very particular.
The writers’ room was very open and you could write anything – although they did say to me, “You think the budget for this is so much higher than it is,” because I had helicopters in it! The notes we got back were really helpful and constructive and I found it very easy to write for them.
The most David Mitchell thing is that he would bring a little crossword with him on set, and Rob would spend the whole time trying to make you laugh. They’re so professional. They know their lines back to front and they know exactly what they want. It brought me up a level.
How would you describe the tone and balance of the sketches?
I think Mitchell & Webb are the best at observational sketches. That’s what the writers’ room was like a lot of the time – talking about things we find really annoying, then going away and thinking about how we could do a sketch around this really annoying thing.
A lot of other sketch shows are character-led, but Mitchell & Webb’s are often about a funny thing they’ve noticed. There are fun visual sketches, surreal stuff, observational sketches, for me this is an honest-to-goodness classic sketch show. And that’s what I’m really excited about. I’ve missed them!
Can you talk about the behind-the-scenes sketches set in the writers’ room?
The original Mitchell & Webb shows always had behind-the-scenes sketches, but in this it was about introducing the four of us new comedians to an audience who will be predominantly tuning in for Mitchell & Webb. It’s still very much their show, of course, but you’ve got to balance it for people who might be thinking, “I didn't want to watch Stevie Martin, I don't know who she is.” It’s a way of integrating us all.
The writers’ room sketches are also a lovely palette cleanser to some of the more high-concept sketches, because it’s just people chatting in a room. After the read-through we got an email saying, “If you want to punch up with some more jokes, and give yourselves some more fun things to do, go ahead”, so we got to be really stupid during filming and they kept loads of it in. For each one, we had a couple of moments where they'd go, “Just improvise some stuff” which is not normally how they work, so that was funny. I got in one line which was exhilarating.
There were moments where David and Rob would absolutely go off on one another, and to see them riff – because they're absolutely word perfect and they write immaculately – was mesmerising. It was like watching a masterclass, and I've never learned so much in my life.
Those sketches reminded me a bit of French & Saunders or Smith & Jones.
That’s true. For the older audience it’s quite nostalgic, because it’s reminiscent of those old shows. It would have been such a misstep to completely alter what they do and to have made it so different that it's unrecognisable. It has to feel like a Mitchell & Webb sketch show. As a fan, I feel really pleased with the direction they’ve gone in. Even If I wasn’t in it, I’d love to watch it for that sense of cosiness. And hopefully with this new cast, we add to it rather than detract.
Sketch shows went out of fashion for a long time. Why do you think that is?
#Sketch is my favourite medium of comedy, it’s how I started out. I’ve written sketch comedy for Kiell, Russell Howard, and other comedians. We've been living in dearth of TV sketch for a bit, and I’d let the dream go a bit, because I couldn’t imagine there would be a time that I’d get a whole sketch show off the ground.
There have definitely been great sketches like Ellie & Natasia, and Lazy Susan and Cardinal Burns, and Jamie Demetriou’s work, but it’s been quite hard to get it going and it’s been hard to see it becoming mainstream again.
I feel like they’re beginning to have a resurgence now. There’s the UK version of SNL coming up, which is a good sign, but for a while, the online landscape has understandably rattled a lot of television executives. They’ve been aware of the success of short form or sketches online and they’ve thought, “What do we do with it? How do we respond?”, but you can see that now TV is starting to try to work alongside online.
With sketch you have a group of people that you have to pay similar money, and for a while people have thought, “How can we make a sketch show without ruining ourselves?” but with Mitchell & Webb you’ve got two household names that people want to see, and it makes so much sense to then surround them with people that Channel 4 want to champion. They couldn’t give us our own vehicles – you almost need an IP or something to anchor it – but hopefully this will lead to fun stuff for us. I know Lara, Kiell and Krystal are all working on projects, so it's a really good springboard and hopefully this is a new little era of sketch comedy.
What’s strange, though, is that sketch is so popular with the younger generation. People in their twenties love Mitchell & Webb’s online sketches – surely they’ll watch on the television?
Yes, and I’m fascinated by that. There’s a whole audience of eighteen to twenty four year olds watching online, but there’s also a whole audience in their late thirties and forties who want to see sketch comedy on TV – we’re not all desperate to only watch sketches on our phones. I think it's quite nice to look at the good screen for a bit.
There are very few sketch groups from that era that are massive online now. Mitchell & Webb have been really embraced online in a way that not many other shows have. I mean – League of Gentlemen is a massive, incredible show, but I don’t see much about them online in the way that I do with Mitchell & Webb. I don’t know why that is, but a lot of our sketches will be released online which, for me as an online person predominantly, is music to my ears.
Do you have a favourite sketch from this series?
I have one mad costume for a sketch that involves Rob and I playing two members of one of the biggest, most beloved pop bands of all time. That was super fun. It was hard to learn but it was brilliant.
Then there’s a sketch that I wrote, that I perform in with both Rob and David. I've kept the call sheet for that, because I’m so proud. Everyone seemed to really enjoy filming that one, even the crew were enjoying filming it. Rob plays this mad character.
interview/picture supplied by C4
