Like many students amid the drizzle of Week Five, I found myself in need of something light-hearted: no death, no heartache, no bleak cinematography. BBC’s Gone Fishing, a show that follows comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse around the riverbanks of the UK, provided a break from both the gloom of Netflix dramas and the blues of pre-Bridgemas November.

The stars of the show were already comic heroes of mine. Mortimer’s work with Vic Reeves made him a titan of absurdist TV by the turn of the century with Shooting Stars and The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. Similarly, Whitehouse had previously helped to revive the British sketch format in 1994 with The Fast Show. It is therefore no surprise that when these two came to work on Gone Fishing in 2018, they had nothing to prove in terms of comedy chops.

“The show depicts the natural laughs that flow between friends, not the kind that leave the viewer grinning but exhausted”

Part of what makes the show so enjoyable is the gentle pace to the veterans’ riffing. The show depicts the natural laughs that flow between friends, not the kind that leave the viewer grinning but exhausted. Gone Fishing is relaxingly unscripted, and a decidedly different beast to shows like The Trip (2010). The success of that series rested on Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s adoption of clashing personas – the cynic and the optimist – to toy with their audience’s perception of celebrity identity. The closest Mortimer and Whitehouse come to an engineered dynamic of that sort is leaning into grumpy or bubbly moods for the sake of a shared joke. It is in the lack of artifice that flows throughout Gone Fishing that I believe lies the key to its disarming charm. From supervisions to college formals, I have often found myself slipping into an academic or social performance, reluctant to “be myself”; Mortimer and Whitehouse’s conversations were a welcome reminder not to overthink every interaction of student life.

One refreshing difference between this docuseries and the dramas I usually gravitate towards is the absence of a labyrinthine plot. I too grow tired of a show that requires a revision session before its finale – not least when it comes to an already intensive workload. Instead, continuity between episodes comes from running jokes and catchphrases. Whether it is waiting for ‘Ted the Dog’ to appear, or for the duo to shout their signature farewell to released fish (“And away!”), the viewer builds a familiarity that is at the root of any good comfort TV.

“Panning across meadows or holding a zoom on a dragonfly is a dangerous game when it comes to entertainment”

Beyond the passive enjoyment it offers, a more serious sentiment is embedded in the show. The premise of Gone Fishing initially revolved around Whitehouse taking Mortimer out to the countryside as he recovered from his heart bypass surgery. Nearly seven years since its initial shoot, the focus on the restorative powers of social connection and time spent in the natural world has expanded to mental health as well as physical – a topic resonating with a multi-generational audience. Panning across meadows or holding a zoom on a dragonfly is a dangerous game when it comes to entertainment. And yet, Series Editor Doug Bryson manages to tease out the poetry of these sequences, weaving together the scenery with discussions of aging, living in the present, and appreciating the quiet beauty of life. The result is a reassuring reminder to take a break in the face of looming deadlines; it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when hunched over a weekly essay.

Canadian comedian Norm Macdonald once said “it’s one thing to make people laugh; it’s another to make them smile.” Gone Fishing is a funny show, but I don’t watch it when I need a chuckle. Here is a calming, joyful work, with an effect few pieces of TV this year have pulled off: it made me smile. I found it an antidote to the hectic pace of Michaelmas and would readily prescribe it during the chaos of Lent in next year.