After being axed by the BBC in 2022, the long-running satirical panel show Mock the Week has finally been revived, albeit by the lesser-known channel TLC.
The show which gave rise to several household names in British comedy – such as Russell Howard, Sara Pascoe, Nish Kumar, and James Acaster – was officially cancelled by the BBC after 21 series “in order to create room for new shows”. However, it became widely speculated that the show was canned due to its broadcaster becoming incredibly cautious of demonstrating political bias. This was due to a pattern of cancellations that same year such as the decommissioning of ‘The Mash Report’ and ‘Frankie Boyle’s New World Order’, both BBC comedy shows satirising current issues. The dismay of their initial cancellation is jested at in the reboot as Ed Byrne quips, “What do our ratings have to be before someone at the BBC admits they made a mistake?”
Mock the Week returns as a part of TLC’s channel rebrand, where it has become free-to-air and commissioned many new comedy and entertainment programmes. This switch to commercial television is perhaps refreshing for producers of the show, who no longer have to adhere to public service broadcast values, but the departure from a leading channel to a lesser-known broadcaster is something the panellists certainly poke fun at, asking, “How far down the channel list is TLC?”
This channel change has also led to slight adaptation in format as episodes now span for 45 minutes (although with ad breaks) instead of their former 28 minute run time, leaving some room for experimenting with new segments. Some features have worked better than others, such as the mini game of ‘Connections’ where the panellists had to find what linked host Dara O’Briain to James Bond, allowing stand-up Ria Lina to humorously remark that “everyone thought in the reboot they both would be played by a woman”.
Features such as the notoriously clippable ‘Scenes We’d Like to See’ have returned as well as ‘Picture of the Week’ and ‘If This is the Answer, what is the Question?’. The show is also opened by a new animated introduction accompanying The Jam’s ‘News of the World’, poking fun at the news cycle in classic Mock the Week fashion by depicting fake headlines such as “Labour to tax fun” and “Harry and Meghan to host Strictly”.
In the first few episodes of the revival, the show has brought back some big names in comedy as panellists such as the likes of Russel Howard, Sara Pascoe, Hugh Dennis, and Angela Barnes who are joined by Rhys James taking over Dennis’ weekly residence as a permanent panellist and Dara O’Briain as host. So far, the new series has had nine episodes commissioned to air which viewers can tune into on Sundays at 9pm.
Mock the Week has had a fine return to form, easing into their comeback with the appearance of old regulars, but it has been said that more fresh-faced comics are to appear on the show in forthcoming episodes. Certainly, current events in politics and pop-culture have gratified panellists with plenty of conversation such as that around the Gorton and Denton by-election, the Mandelson controversies, the Winter Olympics and even the Beckham’s family drama. The repartee of the comics is as good as ever as panellists continue the long–running bombardment of host O’Briain with questions about science and the narrative that James is incredibly baby-faced despite being in his 30’s.
Overall, Mock the Week has not changed much in its revival, but it has not really necessitated such a transformation. For a show with a solid and well-liked format, the most significant change about the comeback was its topicality. With circulating fears of censorship in the media, when a show that satirises politics and authority disappears, it matters. Rhys James told Times Radio, “I would never be so grandiose to say we’re doing a really important thing by mocking the week […] but it did start to feel a bit dodgy when it all started getting canned.”
The return of Mock the Week not only signals hope in the comedy industry in the light of the slowdown of television commissions, but hope for broadcasted discourse on current events, no matter how silly.
