You won’t find a cheerier meditation on dying this Christmas. Bob and Paul share photos of their dead fathers, talk ill health – then rock out to 80s pop. Expect to shed a tear or two
This festive special isn’t so much about angling against gorgeous Highland backdrops as a harrowing existential meditation on the ubiquity of death. Certainly for those of us with free bus passes, it’s more chilling than any MR James ghost story.
Not that I’m complaining: after a Christmas of unremitting festive faux bonhomie, how refreshing that Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer plumb the depths not for salmon but for matters that usually get airbrushed from our mortality-averse culture.
Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Hogmanay Fishing aired on BBC Two and is available on iPlayer
