Their dark materials

For their latest TV venture, veteran comedic duo Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer have taken an unexpected detour into League Of Gentlemen/Little Britain country, and opted to explore the fear and loathing of small-town provincial life. Catterick, currently showing on BBC 3, follows the fortunes of eccentric brothers Carl and Chris Palmer. The former has just left the army to return to his hometown and seek out his long-lost son, whilst Chris is an isolated misfit who has rarely left the family home since the death of his beloved mother.

Undoubtedly, this is far darker material than we have hitherto encountered from Messrs. Reeves and Mortimer, who made their name gleefully subverting the conventions of light entertainment on such anarchic prank-fests as Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out and Shooting Stars.
“It’s the proverbial ‘radical departure’ for us, alright,” agrees Mortimer. “But perhaps it’s the realisation of a strata that’s been there in our work the whole time. Chris and Carl originated from a sketch in Bang Bang It’s Reeves & Mortimer, it was a bit like The Office, but it was set in a club, and Carl and Chris were actually bouncers. But we went back to the characters about 18 months ago, started throwing ideas around, and to be honest I think the storyline that Vic and I ended up with was far stronger then we ever expected.
“We’ve never written anything like this before, it’s a comedy-drama but it’s very dark in some parts, and in others it’s actually a musical, believe it or not. There are songs in every episode that the characters mime to.”
Did the duo find it difficult to adapt to the demands of a more structured format?
“Well, it’s a very different challenge, alright,” replies Bob. “Balancing the humour and the pathos is quite tricky, and that’s something we very consciously had to get to grips with during the writing process. But to honest, I always contend that of everything we’ve done, Shooting Stars was the hardest to write, which you might not expect. It’s really tough coming up witty and original one-liners, and for that show we needed 60 jokes and 140 funny questions. Sometimes we’d sit down for 5 hours and only come up with one question, so the whole series would take us weeks and weeks.”
Catterick sees Reeves and Mortimer graciously acknowledge the influence of both the League Of Gentlemen and Little Britain, with cameo appearances from the League’s Reece Shearsmith and long-term Vic and Bob collaborator, Matt Lucas (aka. George Dawes, the bald, romper-suit clad drummer on Shooting Stars).
“Reece’s cameo is fantastic,” enthuses Reeves. “He plays this guy called Tony, who’s in the middle of an armed robbery when Chris and Carl show up, steal his car and end up with the briefcase full of money – which of course they don’t know about. Tony then pursues Chris and Carl, and basically wants to humiliate them and kill them. He’s not a nice person really!”
“Then as the chase continues, Carl decides to treat Chris to a night at The Mermade Hotel,” continues Bob. “We also tell the story of the people who work at the hotel, and that’s where Matt Lucas comes in. Matt plays the manager and Morwenna Banks plays his girlfriend, Tess. His character is a quite a nasty piece of work really, and I think that people will despise him in the first few episodes, because he’s just so awful to Tess. But his tale has quite a nice journey to it and by the end I think people will be on his side.”
Notably, Chris has a very distinctive look which Reeves decided on himself.
“Yeah, he has the woolly hair and the full English beard!” laughs Vic. “The idea for that particular look came I was in the make-up truck having a dig around in the beard bag, and I happened upon a piece which I thought would look really good. I actually had to have the beard glued on every morning at 6.30am, and it took on a life of its own. There were times when I just wanted to rip it off! I was going to grow a beard of my own, but because I was playing two characters I couldn’t, and that was a cruel blow.”
No longer the hell-raising young upstarts who sent shockwaves through the English comedy scene at the start of the nineties, these days Vic and Bob like to spend their down-time relaxing at their respective homes in Kent. Mortimer, fearlessly putting his rock ’n’ roll cred on the line, even admits to being partial to the odd spot of gardening.
“Well, when you’ve got a house full of kids, there’s never a quite moment, so I like getting out in the garden to get some time to myself!” he protests. “I take the children to school and pick them up, and once they’re in bed I like to watch television, stuff like Location, Location. And I still support Middlesborough but I don’t get to see them play too often these days, although I am going to see the play Arsenal in a few weeks.”
Reeves, meanwhile, recently celebrated his first wedding anniversary to model, Nancy Sorrell, and apparently couldn’t be happier. “I’m content just doing normal things, really,” he relates. “Nancy has forced me to watch Eastenders, which I now enjoy. We make our own soap and bubble-bath, and because we’ve got such a beautiful garden we press some of the flowers and frame them. It might seem a bit odd to some people but it seems normal to us!”
Which neatly sums up Reeves & Mortimer’s gloriously unhinged modus operandi.

Catterick is currently showing Sunday nights on BBC3. The series is scheduled for a repeat run on BBC2 in the near future.