The Armstrong and Miller Show

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The Armstrong and Miller Show is an English sketch comedy series starring the eponymous double act of Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller. The duo originally broke into British television with a series entitled simply Armstrong and Miller, which ran from 1997 to 2001 on Paramount Comedy and Channel 4, whereas the newer series began six years later in 2007 and aired on BBC 1. The third series of The Armstrong and Miller Show ended in December 2010.

Comparisons to That Mitchell and Webb Look are inevitable, as both shows starred a double act, ran during similar time periods, and were slightly renamed versions of earlier sketch shows. In contrast to Mitchell and Webb, however, Armstrong and Miller do not have readily apparent character archetypes (layman/boffin, straight man/indignant man, et cetera).

Famous Running Gags from the series include:

  • A pair of RAF pilots who speak like modern teenagers (Isn't it? Standard.)
  • Striding Man, who evidently has a need for a great deal of unimportant information.
  • "Origin Of" stories depicting cavemen who invent or discover modern ideas such as job interviews and acceptance speeches.
  • Several sketches in which a man has a perfectly amicable conversation with several people, wishes them goodbye, leans over a desk microphone, and says in his best Bond villain voice, "kill them".
  • Brabbins & Fyffe, a parody of Flanders & Swann.
Tropes used in The Armstrong and Miller Show include: