Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing returned for a ninth series at 9pm on Sunday 25 October, with one final episode set aside for Ted. The series is back on iPlayer and Two, and the farewell gives the new run a clear endpoint inside an otherwise familiar format.
Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse
Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse travel from Shetland to Hampshire in the new series, keeping the show’s route simple even as the cast changes around them. Mortimer said, “I looked terrific.” He also said, “We have one little visit from Ted; we have one show left that's got Ted in it.”
Whitehouse set the episode apart by calling it “one of my favourite shows when we visit The Ribble.” He added, “And, we actually catch quite a lot of fish as well - maybe Ted brought us luck.”
Ted and The Ribble
Whitehouse also said viewers have been sad to hear the news about Ted, and that the dog used to appear when they went fishing. “We used to see Ted when we went fishing, so it was always a nice, glorious reunion with Ted,” he said. Mortimer answered with, “He was the perfect dog in that sense.”
That leaves the new series with a small shift rather than a reset. Whitehouse said, “It hasn't changed really,” and described the programme as “a celebration of the rivers, and lakes, and the British countryside.” The farewell to Ted sits inside that same shape, which is why it lands as a change in cast rather than a change in identity.
North of England fishing
Mortimer said he liked being up in the North of England fishing-wise, while Whitehouse said Shetland was amazing and had an extraordinary landscape and seascape. He added, “We missed the puffins by a week though.”
Mortimer’s line about “one show left that's got Ted in it” gives the practical takeaway for viewers: the dog’s final appearance is limited to a single episode, not the whole series. For anyone watching the new run, that episode is the one that carries the most weight, because it closes Ted’s part in Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing without changing the rest of the series around him.
