BBC removes 11 Mitchell and Webb comedy sketches from iPlayer

The BBC has removed nearly a dozen comedy sketches from That Mitchell and Webb Look after deciding they no longer "work today".

The Bafta-winning comedy, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, originally ran for four seasons between 2006 and 2010.

The show recently returned to the BBC's iPlayer to mark its 20th anniversary. But 11 old sketches, including one that reportedly showed the comedy duo satirising racism while in blackface, have now been cut.

A BBC spokesman said in a statement: "This is a 20-year-old sketch show; in consultation with the programme makers, we have included the ones that still work today and not the ones that don't."

The Times reported the removed material included scenes featuring war re-enactors in blackface, a sketch about a contestant on a makeover show wearing a burka and a "tribe" living in a garden centre. Others are said to include a joke about Jimmy Savile and an impersonation of the late celebrity chef Gary Rhodes making homophobic remarks.

BBC news has asked Mitchell and Webb - who rose to prominence on the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show - for a comment.

That Mitchell and Webb Look grew out of a similar radio show titled That Mitchell and Webb Sound, which began on Radio 4 in 2003, and went on to win the Bafta for best comedy programme in 2007.

Defending the double act, fellow comedian Dom Joly, of Trigger Happy TV, questioned the BBC's "censorship" of itself.

Joly told The Times: "I totally get it if the BBC is putting out something really racist, which is laughing at and encouraging other people to feel that it's OK to do that.

"But it's so clear that Mitchell and Webb are not doing that. Their intent was not to be racist."

Jimmy Mulville, the co-founder of Hat Trick Productions which makes Have I Got News For You, told the same newspaper he could understand the corporation's predicament.

"The BBC are in an impossible position," he said.

He added that producers had "to be careful", though, "that this is not the thin end of a wedge where we cut things out".

Mitchell and Webb are not the first comedians to have had their work edited or removed in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Matt Lucas and David Walliams' hit show Little Britain was removed from iPlayer, Netflix and BritBox in 2020, after objections resurfaced about some of their characters portraying people from different ethnic backgrounds.

At the time, both the BBC and Britbox noted how "times have changed" since the Little Britain first aired in the early noughties.

The show is now back on iPlayer but, like Mitchell and Webb, some sketches have been removed.