Paulo Salem Many believe that this is primarily a comedy show, something to watch casually, for leisure. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As matter of fact, this show is mainly a very serious psychometric test. Clearly, it was designed to measure a person's "general intelligence", to put it in psychological parlance. I'm sure no serious psychologist would disagree that the rate of laughs per sketch can be used as a very good approximation of that elusive mental quality.One may imagine that it would be easy to cheat on this test just by faking continuous laughs. But Mitchell, Webb & co, in their impressive comic wisdom, dutifully placed bad jokes among their great hits, precisely to prevent such frauds. There is certainly an optimal laughs/sketch rate, and probably even an optimal laugh->sketch matching, but I shall leave these technical details to psychologists to determine.As a bonus, the show can also be used as an aid in diagnosing psychopathy: it suffices to check whether the subject laughed in the last episode of series four. In fact, the more I watch the episodes, the more correlations I find between certain sketches and certain mental qualities. It is pure scientific genius.Alas, it seems that the general public did not do very well in these tests: the show was canceled after only four series, what a shame! On the other hand, what could be more flattering than to be rejected by Vectron worshipers who can barely compute numberwang?The only reason I do not give the show 10 starts is to push these great guys to come up with even better sketches and, most urgently, figuring out a way to publish them -- perhaps by having some arch-villain to intervene in this prosaic issue? To be more blunt: please take my money (again), guys!

ewaf58 Just catching up with the first series from 2006 and must say it's given me quite a few belly laughs. I loved The Green Clarinet man sketch - how we may wish to have our very own clarinet to sort out awkward office managers.I still haven't worked out the weekly Number-Wang quiz show - and nor have the contestants by the look of things.It's at times very inventive and played with genuine wit. I laughed out loud at a sketch ( not sure from which series) featuring a cheap looking pedal bin shaped Robot that has a switch to change it into either a Cheese-bot or Petrol-bot.Regardless so say it get's confused and fills up a car with cheese - and then fails to commit suicide at it's own failings when further confusion means that it covers itself with cheese instead of petrol.

ian1000 I stumbled upon this by accident, when watching 'Extras', which was a lucky break.I had low expectations; many recent sketch shows have been pretty poor, but the inventive gems shown in this series will live with me for some time. My own favourites:-Grand Admiral Doenitz learning that he's Nazi Germany's last Fuhrer. Angel Summoner and BMX Kid.The show's most famous sketch was "Numberwang" the nonsense daytime quiz show; the best one was the German version with Mitchell rather than web as the host ("Das Ist Numberwang!").More please gentlemen.

bob the moo Coming off the brilliant Peep Show to do something new was never going to be an easy task for David Mitchell and Robert Webb simply because of how brilliant Peep Show was. Their sketch show came to BBC2 at the same time as the new series of Extras in an apparent attempt to draw success from that. The ploy seems to have worked in getting viewers in the door but it is the material that has to do the work of keeping them and, as such, this is a pretty good "Look" because it has sufficient laughs across each 25 minute period to do the business.As with any sketch show it is very hit and miss but it has more hits than misses. The type of humour will appeal to those who liked Peep Show because it is imaginative and quite clever, almost drawing laughs from me by surprise. This can be seen in some of the best characters in the way that they are plucked out of the air and are all touched by a wonderful sense of absurdity that makes them work so well. Angel Summoner, Sir Digby Chicken-Caesar and a few others are good examples because they just seem to come out of nowhere rather than being slight extensions of clichés or stereotypes. Conversely then the weakest characters do rely on these things and by this I mean the snooker commentators. Out of all the characters they seem to have been selected to run across each episode and sadly they are just not very funny after the first outing. Numberwang is also a bit tiresome and it would have been better if they had taken the rip out of gameshows in other ways. Likewise some of the weaker moments are so because they do lack the imagination of the strongest bits and thus we get simple spoofs on political panel shows as well as insurance adverts.Mitchell and Webb play really well off one another and each has a type of character that he is strongest in. Mitchell is strongest playing the rather hesitant loser a bit like his Peep Show character and the best sketches tend to have him in that sort of role. Webb meanwhile tends to be the slightly lesser of the pair if only because he seems inherently less comic looking than Mitchell. However he is still good when he has the material to work with and his chemistry with Mitchell helps him a great deal. The supporting players are mostly good and include Joseph, Colman and Evans. The only weak addition to the show is that of the audience themselves – or rather the recorded laughter, because it kills the material by making the weak stuff seem weaker and the stronger stuff a bit, well, desperate. I don't need to be told when to laugh and all the laughter track here seemed to do was stand out awkwardly particularly when the material wasn't funny at all yet still got massive recorded laughter.Overall though, a good sketch series. The regular imaginative flights of fancy helps it keep above the level of easy cliché or relying on catchphrases to do the business. Of course the downside of this is that they don't enjoy as much easy success at the moment but they are best to keep it this way since their selection of "regular" characters is mostly surprisingly weak. The pair do mostly good work though and the series is well worth catching because when they hit their imagination and wit is funny and surprising in delivery.