That Mitchell and Webb Situation/ Episode 4 /BBC 2 Broadcast on 6th October 2008 1.05am

Episode four of this comedy series featured a short sketch featuring a character called Terry, played by Robert Webb. Terry is seen in close up from the perspective of a TV crew who have taken up residency in his home. The inarticulate character recounts to camera how the crew, i.e. them, just turned up and promised him a mere £75 quid (as an aside he mentions that he still hasn’t received the money yet) and tentatively and passively vents his frustrations. In contrast the measured voice of the director of the crew (heard but not seen) is trying to elicit emotive responses, frequently asking, ‘And how does that make you feel, Terry?’. The voice is reminiscent of Hal’s in 2001, pathologically self-controlled, always seeking to say the right thing to extend the situation at its subject’s expense. To great comic effect, when Terry bemoans the make-up he’s forced to wear, they coolly offer to remove it. In the next cut the consequences of being on TV without make-up are made all too visible, great globules of sweat adorn Terry, his features mercilessly illuminated by the surrounding lights. The viewer is put in the position of scrutinizing him like a show-pig at a country fete; his unease is chilling and cruelly funny. Humour is found in this tension through restraint. While eating food, the controlled voice enquires if he is enjoying his meal, if he’s feeling better now, to which Terry responds saying he’ll be fine, as long the crew don’t block the TV. One can’t help but wander what Terry might be so desperate to see on TV, someone else in an identical scenario to himself?… In fact, Terry goes on to say he doesn’t want to miss an episode of Deep Space Nine (a TV spin off of Star Trek: Next Generation 1993 - 99). As he eats, the boom gently bobs in and out of the frame, a mild irritant putting him off his food. Terry doesn’t know the name for the boom; he is not au fait with the equipment surrounding him and its function. This ongoing interview is in no sense takes place on equal ground (despite ironically being in Terry’s living room). Yet Terry reveals himself to be complicit in its continuance. Terry is clearly uncomfortable and perplexed, put-out but powerless, when he does finally threaten to kick them out, a hand appears within the frame as if from nowhere with a wodge of cash. It Is dangled before Terry’s nose. The money is handed to him, he cautiously ferrets the notes away. His anger abates, but he visibly remains as uncomfortable as before.

Our immediate points of reference might be parodies of the television reality show Big Brother and others of its ilk. It brings to mind the controversy surrounding the contestant Shahbaz Choudhary, who potentially had mental health problems exacerbated by the producers’ strategies, who prioritised spectacular ‘TV moments’ over the participants’ states of mind. Equally, the idea that an uninvited film crew might appear at your doorstep and gradually invade your life has something of the mythic modern horror we see in Pinter’s early work, especially The Birthday Party (in which Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player in his 30s, who lives in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town. Is confronted by two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, who arrive purportedly on his birthday and who appear to have come looking for him, turning Stanley's apparently-innocuous birthday party organized by Meg into a nightmare) and Kafka’s The Trial. Both examples like. Mitchell and Webb, draw a bleak, black humour from the confrontation of the weak with the powerful - who gently taunt or confuse as prelude to something more extreme.

The most significant difference between this sketch and the literary antecedents that have been mentioned is how that power is depicted. Both Stanley Webber and Jospeh K. are physically intimidated by men doing the bidding of a system, one the criminal underworld, the other a totalitarian state: power is depicted in the form of latent or potential physical violence. Mitchell and Webb depict power here as the capacity to (mis)represent you, to destroy your ‘media image’. This has become more fearful, and therefore funnier, than death itself.