Back is one of the funniest and most intriguingly different comedies in a long time. ... it's Blackwell's intelligent and searing writing--which also has quite a bit of emotional nuance--that makes Back much more than mere joke creation for its own sake. And it's Mitchell and Webb who make it all come to life, with Mitchell's virtuoso performance as the increasingly paranoid Stephen shining through all six episodes.

Mitchell and Webb, who have been a team more than two decades, are wonderful together, but they are just the heart of a crack, cracked ensemble, who embody a certain sort of eccentric British family familiar to readers of Austen, Waugh, Wodehouse and Gibbons.

Even at six episodes, with a few harmless misadventures in between Andrew’s arrival and the season’s eventual fate, Back feels a little stretched thin. But again, as with so many other debut seasons of new shows these days, it arrives at an endpoint that signals a much better, more exciting show on the horizon.