BBC Edits 11 Episodes of Famous British Show for Blackface

BBC News removed nearly a dozen sketches from That Mitchell and Webb Look after concluding that they "don't work anymore today." The BAFTA-winning show, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, originally aired for four seasons between 2006 and 2010.

The show recently returned to iPlayer to mark its 20th anniversary, but 11 sketches were cut. Among them, there's  one scene where the duo satirizes racism using blackface, as well as a scene about a reality show participant wearing a burqa and another about a "tribe" living in a garden center.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "This is a 20-year-old sketch program; in consultation with the creators, we included the sketches that still work today, not the ones that don't."

The broadcaster reached out to Mitchell and Webb for comment. The duo rose to prominence on Channel 4's sitcom Peep Show , which originated as a radio format called That Mitchell and Webb Sound, launched on Radio 4 in 2003. The show won the BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme in 2007. The duo's best-known sketch, in which they appear dressed as Nazis asking "Are we the villains?", remains online.

Mitchell and Webb are not the first to have their work edited or removed. Matt Lucas and David Walliams had Little Britain. Removed from iPlayer, Netflix, and BritBox in 2020 following objections regarding characters depicting people of different ethnic backgrounds.

At the time, the BBC and BritBox noted that "times have changed." The show returned to iPlayer, but some sketches were also removed.