After a four year gap, the second season of this hilarious sitcom finds the pair at their passive-aggressive best
They met in Footlights, at the University of Cambridge, of course, but it was Peep Show that cemented the partnership of David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Like many flat-sharers in this economy, they have been more or less trapped together ever since, regardless of any growing resentments. Some sketch shows followed, some books, a badly reviewed stage tour and a reportedly lucrative Apple ad campaign. However, it is only with Back (Channel 4), the Simon Blackwell-penned sitcom-of-sorts now starting its second series, that this duo’s true comedic greatness seems fully realised.
The four-year wait between series necessitates a quick refresher of Back’s thriller-like plot: Stephen (Mitchell) is a defeated sort of man whose brief hope of escaping the shadow of his dead father was snatched away when long-lost foster brother Andrew (Webb) turned up at the funeral. Andrew seemed easy-going, self-assured and adventurous – everything Stephen wasn’t – and was thus poised to usurp him as new landlord of the family’s pub. Their (possibly one-sided) rivalry drove Stephen to madness, while at the end of the series, the fundamental question – is Andrew evil? – still hung teasingly in the balance.
