Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
The BBC has completely cut multiple sketches from 2006 comedy skit show That Mitchell and Webb Look after dumping the Bafta-winning series back onto its streaming service for its twentieth anniversary.
The official line is that some of the old material no longer "works today." What no longer works, it turns out, is comedy that satirised and mocked the very mindset of racism.
A BBC spokesman said: "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." David Mitchell and Robert Webb have not publicly replied at time of writing.
BBC removes 11 Mitchell and Webb comedy sketches from iPlayer https://t.co/ldobFbxK4h
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) September 21, 2026
The sketches were not random gags that aged badly. They were built as self-aware send-ups of the people doing the offending. Yet in 2026, not even this is acceptable.
Eleven sketches have been stripped out, including a skit named 'How Not What To Look Like / Behind the Scenes: Burqa', a makeover-show parody in which Mitchell plays a contestant in a burqa.
The scene then cuts to Mitchell and Webb as themselves. Webb asks whether they are "just taking the piss out of people's sincerely held beli
