Follow Up – Peep Show
Peep Show – Channel 4 – Six Seasons – UK
Peep Show is the single most awkward comedy on television. I challenge you, the reader, to find me another show that delivers as many cringe inducing moments whilst still managing to deliver episodes jam packed with laugh out loud moments. I don’t doubt there are shows out there manufactured to make you feel uncomfortable, I just doubt that they have as many laughs as Peep Show.
Peep Show is a British sitcom that follows the somewhat pathetic lives of Mark and Jeremy, played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb of the also quite funny That Mitchell And Webb Look. Jez is a jobless layabout whilst Mark is a stuck up middle management snob. They’re the original odd couple! For six seasons we’ve followed their socially awkward and sexually frustrated lives through the first person. With every camera angle we’re either seeing the world through the eyes of Jeremy or Mark or any number of oddball’s they come across in their day to day lives. We see what they see, we hear what they think, and we make out with people when they make out with people…
Every season has been filled with wall to wall laughs, most of which are at the expense of Mark, Jeremy and their egos. If you watched the very first episode of Peep Show and couldn’t handle the scene where Mark leaves his hand on the bus seat when Sophie sits on it and then makes the executive decision not to move it because “it’s too late now” then I doubt you’d be able to survive later seasons where Mark wakes up to find himself being raped by the woman he fell asleep with.
Peep Show is a comedy about pain and misery. On The Office the painful antics of Ricky Gervais were always countered by the romantic aspirations of Tim & Dawn, but with Peep Show there’s no gooey centre. Peep Show is a raw look at the way life really is as we follow this pair of selfish assholes as they come to terms with the failure that is their existence. If that description doesn’t make you want to run out and grab your mum a copy for Christmas than I don’t know what will!
On any other show such selfish characters and painful situations would be enough to turn a viewer off for life but Peep Show is just so incredibly funny. It delivers a spot on dissection of how mundane our lives really are by spinning everyday dilemmas out to their most ridiculous, yet somehow logical, conclusions. The sixth season finds Mark and Jez both out of work, and Mark only really caring that he’s lost his job because now he won’t be able to afford the repayments on his new couch. Jez is just disappointed because if he’d kept his sales up he’d have been in line for the free Pizza Hut vouchers.
It isn’t all heavy doses of failure; Super Hanz is on standby as always to offer Jeremy a solution to his problems. He wants Jez to get a van so Jez can be a ‘man with a van’ and so the two of them can be ‘men with ven’. Things are even looking up for Mark, who may be in line for his dream job as History walk guide, where he’ll get his afternoons off for “Museums, lunch and a snooze. The big three.”
Whilst being out of work Jeremy has fallen in love with a girl who deals pot from their apartment building. He ends up buying weed three times a day just so he can see her. Of course that means he has to then sell the drugs himself just to get rid of all that excess dope. He defends this to Mark by saying “Just cause I’m dealing a little drugs doesn’t mean I’m a drug dealer.”
The sixth season hasn’t had any of the breakout moments that some of the previous seasons have had. There’s no ‘dog being eaten’ moment in this season, if you will. There are still dozens of funny lines that I just feel like repeating here, completely out of context:
“Is she from Russia or one of those other made up countries?”
“That’s not a bongo; it’s a small table in the shape of a bongo.”
And my favourite from season six:
“I’ve sold out; a little bit of me has died but you know what a lot of me doesn’t give a shit.”
Peep Show is a fantastic British comedy that is for anybody who thought The Office would have been better if it was told from the first person perspective of David Brent and if he was completely self aware, hated himself, his life and everybody around him. If on the other hand you found David Brent to be an insufferable fool, don’t even bother with Peep Show; these guys will make you cringe so much you’ll break your face.
