Birthdays are a bit awkward on Peep Show. One of the sitcom’s finest episodes was in series four, when Mark (David Mitchell) and girlfriend Sophie (Olivia Colman) stayed with her parents to celebrate her birthday. As always, it didn’t go as per Mark’s plan. He suddenly decided to propose when he saw her inheritance, but let his future father-in-law overhear him admitting he didn’t love her. There was some unsavoury business involving guns, dead animals and arson. Jez (Robert Webb) slept with Sophie’s mother. The final humiliation was a weird birthday ritual involving a pointy hat and the whole family singing Happy Birthday by Altered Images, while Mark half-heartedly joined in, clutching a glass of Liebfraumilch like his life depended on it. Which, with all those guns around, it might well have done.
Still, we shouldn’t let past history put us off marking the show’s own milestones. So happy birthday, Peep Show. First broadcast on 19 September 2003, it turns the grand old age of 10 today. By stealth, Peep Show has become the longest-running sitcom in Channel 4 history. Indeed, it’s arguably the longest-running sitcom currently on British TV (unless you count Rab C Nesbitt, which returns only sporadically and took almost a decade off).
The secret of Peep Show’s longevity and consistently high quality is really rather simple: superb scripts delivered by a cracking cast. Writing team Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong cut their teeth on sketch show Smack The Pony before creating the dysfunctional flatmate comedy, partly based on their own experience especially Bain’s. He once apprehended a burglar by sitting on him, as Mark does in series five (“I’m wrestling with the white working class! Morse never did this! I’m better than Morse!”).
The show doesn’t rely on catchphrases or pratfalls for laughs but is completely character-driven and the duo’s dialogue is sharp as a tack (“If text kisses were real kisses, the world would be an orgy”). Bain and Armstrong since turned their talents to coruscating political comedy The Thick Of It, its spin-offs In The Loop and Veep, student-com Fresh Meat, ecclesiastical sitcom Rev, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and jihad satire Four Lions.
They found the perfect people to bring their creations to life in Footlights alumni Mitchell and Webb, who provide additional gags. As uptight history buff Mark Corrigan and workshy wannabe musician Jeremy “Jez” Usborne (together, the tragically self-styled “El Dude brothers”), the pair became so synonymous with their characters that they starred in a series of Apple computer ads, with Mitchell representing the “square” PC and Webb as the “creative” Mac.
The supporting cast is equally strong. Colman has gone onto become one of our most-loved, best-regarded TV actresses. Paterson Joseph (who plays smarmy boss Alan Johnson), Matt King (hedonistic cult hero Super Hans) and Isy Suttie (geeky love interest Dobby) are all gifted enough to carry their own star vehicles. The show has even been graced by minor royalty in Sophie Winkleman, who’s now married to Freddie Windsor but played Jez’s ex Big Suze for five series.
Peep Show’s working title was “POV”, in reference to its unconventional filming style. The cringe-inducing events of Mark and Jez’s lives are seen predominantly from their own points of view, with their unedifying thoughts audible as voiceovers – techniques which film buffs Bain and Armstrong borrowed from Being John Malkovich and Annie Hall. Although these stylistic quirks mark Peep Show out as unique on TV, Armstrong and Bain believe the POV method prevents it from having true mass appeal. Ratings have never topped 2m, although the show has a strong afterlife on DVD, each series shifting around 400,000 copies.
However, fans like it that way – a cult gem rather than a mainstream hit, yet arguably the best Brit-com of the past decade. It’s pulled off the rare trick of getting stronger with each series, en route winning two Baftas and a Rose D’Or. Ricky Gervais, who knows a thing or two about comedy, has hailed Peep Show as “the best sitcom since Father Ted”.
Writing and shooting each run of six episodes takes nine months. With Peep Show’s creators and stars in huge demand, that’s becoming increasingly tricky to squeeze into their schedules. However, rest assured that a ninth series is in the pipeline.
“I’m amazed and grateful the programme’s lasted this long,” said Armstrong recently. “Provided we can find new humiliating things – be it physically, emotionally or relationship-wise – to subject the characters to, then we’ll do it.” There’s even been mention of a possible movie spin-off. That really would make them better than Morse.
Source: telegraph.co.uk – Peep show turns 10
