It made stars of a then unknown David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and introduced Britain to the joys of Olivia Colman. After 12 years of disasters, cock-ups and social faux pas, on Wednesday night the acclaimed Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show will begin its ninth and final run.
Written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, who went on to create the successful Fresh Meat for C4, Peep Show is notable for its point-of-view cameras flipping between the characters’ faces – a technique that initially made it feel more like a dizzying experimental short film than a sitcom that would go on to define a generation.
This elaborate, and initially perhaps somewhat off-putting, filming method may have contributed to Peep Show’s slow burn: the comedy proved not to be an instant hit for Channel 4, but instead took several series to find its audience and acclaim.
But it also allowed for the painfully honest internal monologues – “I’m just a normal functioning member of the human race and there’s no way anyone can prove otherwise” – that have become Peep Show’s trademark.
The sitcom’s main characters, Mark (Mitchell) and Jez (Webb), aka “el Dude Brothers”, have taught their viewers many important lessons about modern life: how to deal with being stood up on a date (“you’re never alone with a phone”), when to eat which type of bread (“brown is for main, white is for pudding”), and the dangers of crack (“very moreish”).
Bain and Armstrong have mined the excruciating details of generation rent for maximum comic effect. Flat-sharing as an adult, way beyond the acceptable age of post-student life, with someone you used to be friends with and now barely tolerate, is a peculiarly modern reason for being stuck in a kind of mutually assured destruction pact.
There’s a long-standing theory that British sitcoms work best in short and bittersweet batches: Fawlty Towers’ minimal two-series, 12-episode run set a template that was adopted by The Young Ones and borrowed by Ricky Gervais for The Office and Extras.
Peep Show has kept to a strict six-episode run for each series, as we have watched Mark and Jez through life’s markers. Births, deaths and marriages have all been handled with the pair’s characteristic lack of basic social skills – Mark tried to hide from his own wedding; a funeral provided the perfect opportunity for a first date; both proved incapable of driving Soph to the hospital when she went into labour with Mark’s child.
Even though they’ve aged, Mark and Jez have never really grown. The “Croydon Bullingdon”, as the pair call themselves in the trailer for the final series, have tried their best to get away from each other, but never quite managed it.
