The removes Mitchell and Webb sketches from iPlayer after bringing That Mitchell and Webb Look back online for its 20th anniversary. The cut material includes blackface and other sketches, with as many as 11 removed from the Studios-produced series.
iPlayer and 11 sketches
The reinstated run is a 20-year-old sketch show, and the edit is not cosmetic. A spokesperson said: “That Mitchell and Webb Look has been made available on iPlayer. 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.”
For viewers, that means the version now online is not the same library that originally aired. The change narrows the available set to the sketches the and the programme makers judged usable in 2025, rather than leaving the series untouched for archive purposes.
Mitchell, Webb and Olivia Colman
David Mitchell and Robert Webb star in the series, and one removed sketch featured them as English Civil War re-enactors who recreate a conflict between government forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a rebel militia. In that scene, Mitchell asks, “Are you absolutely sure that this isn’t racist?”
Another cut sketch showed Webb and Olivia Colman parodying a makeover show before a woman in a burqa was revealed to be Mitchell in Blackface. That is the part of the reinstated run the has now excluded, rather than leaving the material in place and waiting for the reaction to die down.
Dom Jolly and precedent
Dom Jolly called the cuts “hysterical censorship” in comments to The Times of London. The has taken similar action before with Little Britain and Mighty Boosh, so the move sits inside a wider pattern of editing older comedy for online return rather than treating every archive title as fixed.
That leaves one question hanging over the iPlayer version of That Mitchell and Webb Look: which specific 11 sketches were removed. Until the lists them, viewers only know the shape of the cut, not the full map.
