How did Hollywood turn John Bishop into Will Arnett?

Kermode & Mayo’s Take

Sony Music

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Tv Reviews, Tv & Film

4.3 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some exciting news—The Take is now on Patreon: www.patreon.com/kermodeandmayo. Become a Vanguardista or an Ultra Vanguardista to get video episodes of Take Two every week, plus member‑only chat rooms, polls and submissions to influence the show, behind‑the‑scenes photos and videos, the monthly Redactor’s Roundup newsletter, and access to a new fortnightly LIVE show—a raucous, unfiltered lunchtime special with the Good Doctors, new features, and live chat so you can heckle, vote, and have your questions read out in real time. Our guests this week are two comedy giants: star of Arrested Development, 30 Rock and BoJack Horseman, Will Arnett—and mega-successful scouse standup John Bishop. It’s Bishop’s unlikely comedy origin story that inspired Is This Thing On?, the new Hollywood feelgood blockbuster directed by Bradley Cooper. In it, Arnett plays a divorced dad who puts his name down for an open mic at a bar just to save the entry fee—then accidentally catches the comedy bug. As he secretly follows his new standup dreams, can comedy save his sanity—and maybe even his marriage? Find out what Mark makes of it, plus two more of this week’s big screen releases. First up its Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s homage to the French new wave film movement of the 1960s. Linklater’s film dramatises the making of one of its essential movies, Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless. And from uber-cool Parisians murderous monkey’s, we’ll be reviewing Primate too: a tongue in cheek horror where a pet chimp goes bad. The boys are here in the studio IRL this week, so you’ll be getting all of this, plus the box office top 10 and the banterous heights of the laughter lift, beamed right at you from the room where movie-reviewing magic happens. Keep it real, Vanguardistas and all-comers! Timecodes with YT clip codes (for Vanguardistas listening ad-free) Nouvelle Vague review - 10:32 Box Office Top 10 - 23:51 Will Arnett and John Bishop interview - 39:19 Is This Thing On? review 56:11 Laughter Lift - 01:03:04 Primate review - 01:07:20 You can contact the show by emailing correspondence@kermodeandmayo.com or you can find us on social media, @KermodeandMayo Please take our survey and help shape the future of our show: https://www.kermodeandmayo.com/survey EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/take Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! A Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts To advertise on this show contact: podcastadsales@sonymusic.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:03.8	This episode is brought to you by Mooby, the global film company that champions great cinema.
1:09.5	From iconic directors to emerging otters, there's always
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1:28.4	which is Die My Love, the new film by Lynn Ramsey. It has an extraordinary central performance
1:33.1	by Jennifer Lawrence, but also I think Robert Pattinson is brilliant in it. I love all of
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1:45.3	movie from January the 23rd in the UK. And it is wonderful. It's my favourite film of last year.
1:50.0	To stream the best of cinema, you can try Mooby free for 30 days at Mooby.com slash
1:55.1	curmode and Mayo. That's M-U-B-I-com slash Kermode-Mayo for a whole month of great cinema for free.
2:02.9	Before we begin, a quick reminder that you can become a Vanguard Easter
2:06.2	and get an extra episode every Thursday.
	...

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