David Mitchell

David Mitchell advanced to the front of a long line of cutting-edge British comedy luminaries as star of the envelope-pushing Channel 4 sitcom "Peep Show" (2003- ) and proceeded to ensconce himself as one of the U.K.'s sharpest comedic wags. Mitchell established creative partnership with Robert Webb at Cambridge University and began contributing sketches to a succession of Brit shows in the early 2000s. Their tandem act helped sell dual starring roles on "Peep Show," a ribald, wickedly mean sitcom about two mismatched, irredeemably hapless roommates. It led to a raft of nominations and awards and a sequence of projects under their Mitchell and Webb imprint, including four seasons of their razor-sharp sketch-com "That Mitchell and Webb Look" (BBC, 2006-2010) and the feature film comedy "Magicians" (2007). Mitchell's talents for rapier, curse-laden wordplay made him much-in-demand among the U.K.'s panel shows, and he expanded his imprint across media with a signature series of online rants, a regular newspaper column and a gig deconstructing the news for Channel 4's "10 O'Clock Live" (2011- ). Juxtaposing his nerdy, unassuming aesthetic with a deft skill for emphatically dispelling BS, Mitchell steadily built a reputation as Great Britain's answer to Jon Stewart.