That Mitchell and Webb Look/Funny
- That Mitchell And Webb Look: Dead British Actors.
- "Are we the baddies?"
- The snooker commentators also get a good one, when a player not noted for his calm disposition loses a frame due to a fluke shot: "Oh my God, he's fluked it! Barry Evans has fluked a pot, and he's as good as dead!!!"
- What I Reckon. Especially for regular readers of spEak You're bRanes.
- All of the Numberwang sketches have several of these. In particular...
- First game:
- "Let's rotate the board!" It rotates to reveal two more contestants (David Mitchell as "Jon" and James Bachman as "Miles")... then rotates back to Julie and Simon.
- Both contestants guessing "one" with various inflections until Simon's "one" is declared Numberwang.
- Second game:
- "The maths quiz that simply everyone."
- "Simon to go first. Too slow. Julie?"
- This exchange:
- First game:
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Host: Let's move on to round two, imaginary numbers. Simon? |
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- Third game:
- "...and Simon, who is from space."
- Gyles Brandreth in Number Corner, a parody of Countdown's Dictionary Corner:
- Third game:
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Host: So, Gyles, any funny number stories? |
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- Numberscoff. Particularly at the end when Simon belches and gets a Belchwang bonus.
- The board rotates to reveal a Nativity scene with David Mitchell as Joseph and James Bachman as Mary.
- Simon repeatedly guessing 6 (while the board displays a 7 that increases in size).
- And the last word from Gyles.
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Gyles: Numberwank. |
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- Fourth game:
- "The numbers show that simply everyone... is talking about?"
- Simon being asked if he sings in Anglesey. He gives a musical response that contains "Can't you see, I cannot sing."
- "...instead of starting with Round 1, we're gonna start with Round 1."
- Going for three whole days without hitting Numberwang. The Sudden Death round is literal; whoever dies first (while being bombarded with "Number gas") wins. It's made even funnier when Julie dies first, complete with "ding" and funeral flowers that spell out "That's Numberwang!"
- Wordwang:
- "...Simon, who is from a factory and made from a special metal." (Simon touches himself with a CLANG sound)
- This exchange:
- Fourth game:
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Host: Julie, ever killed a man? |
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- And this one:
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Julie: Buzz. |
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- The word boards. They guess all sorts of non-animal words in the Animal round while an animal shows on the screen. Then the same thing with Countries of the World: the board shows vegetables and the contestants guess fake countries such as "Fintanland" and "The Independent Republic of Yeb". Simon guesses "Ireland", which he is told is not a vegetable.
- Julie and Simon being penalized for bad guesses by having letters removed from their names. They go into the Wordwangerator as Uli and Im, with respective scores of "H" and "tarpaulin".
- When the board rotates, it reveals David Mitchell and James Bachman re-enacting a Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter. As the board finishes rotating, we hear the gun go off.
- In the Gratuitous German version, "Nümberwang", the contestants are introduced as being a Hamburger and Frankfurter.
- "Julie, wie gehts?" "Nein." "Simon?" "Ja." ("Julie, how are you?" "No." "Simon?" "Yes.")
- The board rotating to reveal Robert Webb and James Bachman in a re-enactment of the torture scene from Marathon Man.
- The host wishing Julie good luck before Wangernumb - in English, tricking her into answering "Oh, thanks very much!" in a parody of Gordon Jackson giving himself away in The Great Escape, and causing the host to immediately disqualify her.
- Among Simon's prizes for winning are a beer stein and a picture of David Hasselhoff.
- In the live show The Two Faces of Mitchell and Webb, Julie and Simon are played not by Olivia Colman and Paterson Joseph (their actors in the television series), but by Abigail Burdess and James Bachman; the host explains that they have "regenerated into two slightly less expensive actors".
- Julie gets Numberwang before the game even begins, during banter with the host about her two children, 5 and 7... and 6 and 3.
- This exchange:
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Simon: Pi and a bit? |
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- No-numberwang, in which Simon accidentally shouts "Brazil", which is declared a number, as in "Brazil Britons are among the dead."
- A retrospective of numbers which have left us during the preceding year... including 4, forcing the host to skip from Round 3 straight to Round 5.
- When the board rotates (with the aid of stagehands), it is the host who is rotated away, replacing Robert Webb with a similarly-attired David Mitchell.
- The (new) host making no secret of his favouritism toward Simon during the final Numberflan round.
- Although the games of Numberwang between Julie and Simon were retired as a recurring sketch after the first series, the second series featured several sketches based around Numberwang.
- A spoof trailer for The Numberwang Code, with David Mitchell as Tom Hanks and Robert Webb as Ian McKellen. In one scene, closer inspection of The Last Supper reveals that Jesus and the disciples are having Chinese takeaway - specifically, chicken in black bean sauce with a side of egg fried rice, also known as a number 37 with a side order of 14... which makes Numberwang.
- The Official Numberwang Play Numberwang at Home Numberwang board game, which allows fans to avoid falling afoul of the complicated copyright law that would ordinarily send them to prison for playing Numberwang at home. Includes a 37-volume Ruleswang rule book (each volume being the size of a large dictionary).
- The History of Numberwang documentary, culminating in the homicidal rampage of the Numberwang computer Colosson, who is determined to destroy everything that isn't Numberwang - including television. The documentary includes clips of a pre-Colosson version of Numberwang in which whether or not a given number is Numberwang was worked out by hand and could take hours (leading the host to go to a musical interlude in which he hums God Save the Queen - causing the researchers to stand, without missing a beat in their work), and the first Colosson version presented by Robert Webb as Call My Bluff host Robert Robinson.
- The Agent Suave sketch, which is essentially a Casino Royale spoof set in a casino where all the games are typical village fete things like 'guess the weight of a fruitcake', is entirely one of these.
- "THE LIGHTS ARE GOING OUT ALL OVER TELEVISION!"
- Queen Victoria's objection to the American Ambassador's gift of 20,000 linden trees... and the reason behind her objection. And the Prime Minister's response to her objection.
- The "Posh Dancing" sketch, where Mr. Darcy says what we've all been thinking.
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Elizabeth: I confess I did not know. |
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- A 'behind the scenes' sketch where David and Robert are plotting the order of the sketches and where the 'miss' sketches should be arranged around the 'hit' ones (in reference to the common sketch-show criticism that the sketches are always 'hit-and-miss'), before it becoming a meta-take on the common criticisms they receive. It ends like this:
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Robert: [Very smugly] And people call us smug! |
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