In the crisp autumn light of a Hertfordshire riverbank, where the water murmurs secrets to the overhanging willows, two old friends cast their lines into the gentle current. Bob Mortimer, the wiry comedian with a grin that could disarm a room, adjusts his woolly hat against the chill. Beside him, Paul Whitehouse—stocky, affable, forever the straight man to Bob’s whimsical detours—squints at the float bobbing on the surface. It’s a scene as familiar as a well-worn jumper: the quiet rhythm of fishing, punctuated by bursts of laughter that echo like startled kingfishers. This is Gone Fishing, the BBC’s understated gem, back for its sixth series. But as the credits roll on the opener, aired last Sunday to an audience of 3.2 million, something lingers in the air—a subtle shift, like the first frost etching patterns on a windowpane.

Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been fishing together on screen since 2018, turning what could have been a niche pastoral idyll into a cultural phenomenon. What began as a lockdown antidote—two middle-aged men escaping the world’s clamor for the solace of rod and reel—has evolved into a meditation on friendship, mortality, and the absurd beauty of simply being. Series past brimmed with their trademark absurdity: Bob’s surreal tales of childhood mishaps (remember the episode where he claimed to have once wrestled a pike with his bare hands?), Paul’s deadpan interjections, and guest appearances from the likes of Ted Hastings or Brian Blessed that felt less like celebrity cameos and more like improbable pub yarns come to life. Viewers tuned in not just for the catches—rare as they were—but for the camaraderie, the unhurried pace that offered a balm in an era of endless scrolling.

Yet this season, premiering amid the golden decay of November leaves, feels different. Softer, perhaps. More weighted with the gravity of sunsets than the levity of dawn. Bob, now 66, has been open about his health battles in recent years: a heart scare in 2015 that led to triple bypass surgery, followed by rheumatoid arthritis so severe it once confined him to a wheelchair, and a skin cancer diagnosis in 2020 that he treated with the quiet stoicism of a man who’s learned to laugh at pain. These aren’t footnotes in his story; they’ve reshaped it. And in Gone Fishing Series 6, they seep into the frame like ink in water—subtle, indelible, transforming the show from a gentle escape into something profoundly human.

“I suppose it’s a bit like fishing itself,” Bob muses in a rare moment of candor during our Zoom chat from his North London home, his face pixelated but his eyes sharp as ever. “You cast out, full of hope, but you never know what you’ll pull up. Sometimes it’s a boot, sometimes it’s a memory you didn’t know was there.” He pauses, fiddling with a mug of tea that steams faintly on screen. “This series… it’s got more of those unexpected pulls. More gratitude, I think. For the river, for Paul, for still being here to wet a line.”

Paul, joining us midway through the call from his Essex bolthole, chuckles—a low, rumbling sound that grounds the conversation. “Gratitude? Blimey, Bob, you’re turning into a poet. Next you’ll be reciting Keats while untangling your leader.” But there’s warmth in his teasing, a deference born of decades of friendship. The pair met in the late ’80s on the comedy circuit, bonding over shared miseries: Paul’s battle with illness in his youth, Bob’s own brushes with the abyss. Gone Fishing was their midlife reinvention, a way to reclaim joy from the jaws of routine. Now, with Bob’s health etched into every episode like fine lines on a well-loved map, it becomes their testament.

The season kicks off in the familiar idyll of the River Wye, where the duo decamp to a peg overlooking meadows still dusted with morning dew. The fishing is, as ever, gloriously futile—Paul hooks a tiddler that slips away mid-net, eliciting a groan that dissolves into giggles—but the real hook is in the pauses. Where previous series might have filled silences with rapid-fire anecdotes, here they stretch, inviting reflection. Bob, bundled in a Barbour jacket that hangs looser on his frame than before, stares at the water with an intensity that feels almost reverent. “You know,” he says softly, as the camera lingers on his profile, “after the surgery, everything looked different. Colors brighter, like someone’s turned up the contrast. Even the maggots—those wriggling little blighters—they seemed… I don’t know, more alive.”

It’s a line that could tip into sentimentality, but Mortimer delivers it with his signature wry twist, followed by a tale of once mistaking a bait tin for a portable phone booth. Whitehouse, ever the anchor, responds not with mockery but a nod. “Aye, and I remember you phoning home from it, asking for more cheese.” The laughter that follows is genuine, but threaded with something deeper—an acknowledgment that these shared absurdities are lifelines, fragile as the filament of a fishing line.

As the episodes unfold—six in total, each a 30-minute vignette from Britain’s waterways—the change becomes clearer. Episode two takes them to the Norfolk Broads, where guest comedian Joe Lycett joins for a day of perch hunting amid the reed-fringed lakes. Lycett, known for his flamboyant activism, brings his usual sparkle, but it’s Bob’s quieter contributions that steal the show. Midway through a disastrous attempt at fly-fishing (Bob’s rod ends up looped around a low branch like a festive garland), he turns to Joe and says, “Health stuff teaches you patience, doesn’t it? You wait for the bite, but really, you’re just glad the line didn’t snap.” Lycett, who lost his father young, meets his gaze. “Or that you’re still here to cast it.”

These moments aren’t scripted for tears; they’re organic, born of the trust Mortimer and Whitehouse have cultivated over years. The show’s producer, Rob Murdock, tells me over coffee in a Soho café that some scenes were nearly cut for being “too raw.” “Bob would start a story, trail off, and we’d all sit there in the boat, just listening to the water lap. Paul would say something daft to lighten it, but there was this… vulnerability. We filmed a bit in the Lakes where Bob talked about his arthritis flares—how the cold seeps into your bones like an uninvited guest. It was so personal, we wondered if it belonged. But Bob insisted: ‘Leave it in. It’s part of the catch.’”

That ethos defines the series. Episode three, on the banks of the River Test in Hampshire—a chalk stream so pristine it looks airbrushed—features no guest, just the two friends and their thoughts. The fishing yields a solitary roach, triumphantly landed by Paul after an hour’s vigil. But the triumph is in Bob’s reaction: not envy, but unalloyed delight. “Look at that little fighter,” he whispers, cradling the fish in wet hands before its release. “Slippery as a politician’s promise, but twice as honest.” It’s a line that lands with extra resonance, given Bob’s recent foray into memoir-writing with And Away…, where he chronicled his Geordie upbringing and the heart attack that nearly ended it. There, he wrote of gratitude as “a quiet thief that steals your complaints.” Here, on screen, it’s embodied.

Viewers have noticed. Social media buzzed post-premiere: #GoneFishing trending with posts like “Mortimer’s eyes say more than words this series—pure poetry” and “Paul’s the rock, Bob’s the river. Deeper than ever.” Ratings are up 15% from last season, bucking the trend for factual TV. It’s no surprise; in a year bookended by global anxieties—escalating climate woes, the lingering shadow of pandemics—Gone Fishing offers not escapism, but equipment for endurance.

To understand this evolution, one must rewind to the show’s origins. Mortimer and Whitehouse first teamed up for Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing as a side project to their The Fast Show days. Paul, recovering from a stroke in 2014 that left him questioning his comic timing, suggested fishing as therapy. “I’d spent years in hospitals,” he recalls, his voice gravelly over the line. “Fishing’s the opposite—no beeps, no charts. Just you, the water, and whatever nonsense Bob spouts to keep the demons at bay.” Bob, fresh from his own cardiac odyssey, signed on immediately. “Paul’s the only bloke I know who can make silence funny,” he quips. Their chemistry—Bob’s flighty surrealism against Paul’s grounded sarcasm—proved addictive.

Early seasons were lighter, laced with celebrity anglers like John Simpson or Madge from The Fast Show. But as Bob’s health faltered, so did the facade. The 2020 series, filmed amid COVID restrictions, hinted at it: fewer laughs, more long shots of empty horizons. Then came the cancer diagnosis, announced with Bob’s trademark deflection—”I’ve got a bit of the old melanoma, but it’s mostly in remission, like my diet.” Chemotherapy followed, zapping his energy but not his spirit. “I lost my hair, gained a few pounds from the steroids,” he told The Guardian last year. “But the real loss? Time. Makes you picky about how you spend it.”

This series marks his return to full form, but transformed. Filming wrapped in late summer, just months after Bob’s latest check-up cleared him for “light duties”—which, in Mortimer-speak, means “as much malarkey as the river can handle.” The locations were chosen with care: accessible pegs for Bob’s mobility, warmer climes to ease his joints. Episode four, in the sun-dappled pools of the River Itchen, brings on folk singer Laura Marling as guest. Her ethereal voice weaves through the episode as they troll for trout, but it’s Bob’s duet with her on a mangled rendition of “The Water Is Wide” that lingers—a cappella, off-key, achingly sincere. “Singing’s like fishing,” Bob admits afterward. “You throw your voice out there, hope it hooks something back. After everything, I’m just grateful it still comes out.”

Marling, in a follow-up interview, calls it “the most honest collaboration I’ve done. Bob doesn’t perform vulnerability; he lives it. There’s a scene where he talks about the mornings he wakes up stiff as a board—literally can’t bend to tie his boots. Paul kneels down, does it for him, without a word. No big reveal, just mates being mates. It broke me.”

Such intimacy extends off-screen. Between takes, the crew reports, Bob and Paul would retreat to the van for “proper chats”—not the on-camera banter, but the raw stuff: fears unspoken, joys unshared. One evening in the Yorkshire Dales (episode five’s rugged setting), after a fruitless day chasing grayling in the peaty burns, Bob opened up about the “what ifs.” “What if that bypass hadn’t held? What if the cancer had spread?” Paul, nursing a pint of bitter, listened. “Then we’d be fishing in heaven, you daft sod. But as it’s not, pass the crisps.”

It’s this blend—the humor as armor, the heart as core—that elevates Series 6. The finale, set against the tidal pull of the River Blackwater in Essex, caps it with a masterclass in understatement. No guests, no gimmicks: just a sunset session where the two reflect on eight years of Gone Fishing. Bob hooks a mullet—a rare prize—and releases it with a whisper: “Off you go, love. Make the most of it.” As the light fades, Paul raises a thermos of tea in toast. “To seasons,” he says. Bob adds, “And the ones we almost missed.”

The impact ripples beyond the screen. Charities like the British Heart Foundation have seen a 20% uptick in inquiries post-airing, with viewers citing Bob’s story as catalyst. “He’s not a survivor in the triumphant sense,” says Dr. Elena Vasquez, a cardiologist and fan. “He’s a continuer. That resonates—reminds us health isn’t a battle won, but a path walked, one cast at a time.”

For Mortimer and Whitehouse, the show’s legacy is personal. “It’s not about the fish,” Paul insists. “It’s about the company. Bob’s taught me that every outing’s a gift—wrapped in worms, maybe, but a gift.” Bob nods, his grin flashing. “And Paul’s the one who reminds me not to overthink the bow.”

As Gone Fishing Series 6 draws to its close, it leaves viewers not with closure, but invitation: to pause, to reflect, to find gratitude in the ordinary. In a world that rushes toward horizons we can’t control, Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse offer a different kind of season—one where the real catch is the life we’re still living. Warm, funny, softer around the edges. Like a man who knows every sunrise is a gift.