Mammoth, review: gloriously old-fashioned sitcom favours gags over personal demons

Yesterday’s man: Mike Bubbins (centre) with Sian Gibson, William Thomas, Joseph Marcell and Joel Davison – Simon Ridgway/BBC

The premise of Mammoth (BBC Two) is delightfully silly. In 1979, PE teacher Tony Mammoth was buried in an avalanche during a school ski trip. Forty years later, he is pulled out of the snow, miraculously preserved and very much alive and returns to his old job with his 1970s styling and attitudes still intact. Think of it as a reverse Life on Mars, complete with flares and a Ford Capri.

The series consists of precisely one joke on repeat – that Tony is a relic from that decade – but delivered with such confidence by writer and star Mike Bubbins that it doesn’t wear thin. Electric cars, veganism, the fact that fame now entails munching kangaroo testicles in the jungle rather than going out on the lash with Oliver Reed – Tony is mystified or amused by all of it. He bursts out laughing at the sight of a man carrying a baby in a papoose.

With a medallion in his chest hair and a glove compartment stocked with aftershave, Tony is a send-up of moustachioed masculinity. You might have expected a BBC comedy to teach Tony how to become an enlightened, non-toxic male. But he doesn’t change a bit. Mammoth is content to let Tony be his happy, unreconstructed self.

Of course his boss in the PE department is a mixed-race lesbian, but that’s not a triumph of wokeness – merely a chance for Tony to beam: “This is Lucy, my mixed-race lesbian friend,” when trying to impress one of the school mums with his right-on credentials.

Bubbins was a PE teacher before he became a comedian. It’s always been a job with comic potential – think Brian Glover in Kes. Tony watches football matches from the comfort of his car while enjoying a smoke. Some references to 1970s schooling may cause flashbacks. When Tony learns that the school has no woodwork department, he frowns: “What do you do with the thick kids?”

At a time when every television comedy seems to be exploring issues, from mental illness (Big Mood, Such Brave Girls), menopause (The Change) or alcoholism (The Dry), it’s nice to have a show that offers uncomplicated fun.

All episodes of Mammoth are on the BBC iPlayer now

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