Time flies when you're having fun, they say. But for 30 precious minutes this week it actually seemed to move at supersonic speed. The reason was Peep Show, which returned to Channel 4 on Wednesday for a ninth six-part series and was so good and welcome and funny that it seemed to pass in a flash.
As well as being the best British sitcom of the 21st century - and I'll defend that claim against all-comers: just pick up the phone - Peep Show's return after three years is doubly welcome because that hiatus was supposed to be of the permanent variety.
Writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong told us so prior to the screening of series eight in 2012. “We don't want the standards to drop, we want to keep the stories fresh, and there are only a finite amount of stories you can tell about any character,” Bain said. “We don't want to be remembered as the guys who let it drift into mediocrity. We'd rather go out on a high.”
They didn't and they undoubtedly will.
So why is Peep Show so great? Certainly not because of its dazzling originality of plot. It's about two old college friends, Jeremy (Robert Webb) and Mark (David Mitchell), who share a flat together, so the basic premise is straight out of The Odd Couple. Jeremy also shares DNA with Withnail, the character played by Richard E Grant in Bruce Robinson's cult 1987 film Withnail And I. He's also like every toddler you've ever met: self-centred, temperamental and, well, childish.
Both he and Mark are equally hopeless at the big things that matter - diet, girls, jobs - so there are elements too of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost dynamic in late 1990s sitcom Spaced, which pre-dates Peep Show by several years. There are other comparisons: where Spaced also had national treasure Jessica Stevenson in its cast and featured an oddball conceptual artist called Brian Topp, Peep Show has national treasure Olivia Colman and an oddball crack addict called Super Hans (played with leering gusto by Matt King).
Instead, it's something terribly old-fashioned which makes Peep Show so brilliant: the scripts, written not by a huge team of pens-for-hire as in America, but by two friends who sit side-by-side in an office and knock ideas off each other until one of them comes up with a line like: “You realise tinned food is just for crack-heads and wars?”. Or: “Maybe he's on acid or watched a whole Jeremy Kyle”. Or: “I suppose doing things you hate is just the price you pay to avoid loneliness”.
But allied to the scripts is something else, an innovative structure blending point of view shots with voice-overs detailing Mark and Jeremy's thought processes. That disparity between the words that come out of their mouths, and the things that run through their heads adds to the fun. If you can call social dysfunction, self-obsession and moral nihilism fun.
Where Peep Show is concerned, we can. The only bad news is that this series really is the last. Come 10.30pm on December 16, we'll finally have to say goodbye forever.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel