Peep Show: The Pinnacle of Awkward British Comedy

One night, a night that involved far, faaaaar too much alcohol, Rory and I were laying around my living room. Not tired enough to sleep, too intoxicated for actual activity, we decided to watch something. I have an unhealthily extensive DVD collection, and we weighed all our options. What did we feel like? Hitchcock? Frat Pack? Bruce Lee? And then it occurred to us.

Peep Show.

I will never, ever forget the pure joy of that joint, drunken EUREKA moment. No TV show has ever been more appreciated than Peep Show was by myself and Rory at that point in time.

Peep Show follows the trials and travails of two 30-something flatmates, Mark and Jeremy, played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, of Mitchell&Webb fame. (So, so good. SO GOOD. But Mitchell&Webb deserves its own post.) Mark is an uptight office worker who’s hung up on his female coworker, Sophie. Jeremy is an unemployed loser who fancies himself a ‘musician.’ It’s shot from the characters’ actual points of view, all shaky and handheld (I’m pretty sure they use those helmet cam things, too), and you get to hear a lot of inner monologue. HiLArious inner monologue.

If awkward situations (bordering on the painful) are not at all your thing, this may not be the show for you. If, on the other hand, you thought the original British version of The Office was genius (which it WAS), you NEED to watch this. It’s like the maladjusted lovechild of The Office and Arrested Development, taken to the nth degree. It is perfection.

It’s hard to convey what it’s actually like, and since people tend to either love it or hate it, here are some clips from the first season (the show just wrapped season four this year):

Clip, Season 1, Episode 1: Meeting the Characters

Clip, Season 1, Episode 2: Elf Porn and Nazi Love

Clip, Season 1, Episode 3: “I’m Doing Excellent Shopping”

It’s not for everyone, I know, but it’s definitely in my top ten sitcoms of all time. It’s just… I think it does a better job at accomplishing what it sets out to accomplish than almost any other show I can think of. I miss it. I need to figure out if they’re gonna make a season five.

(You can find a lot of the episodes (at least of the more current seasons) on youtube. Barring that, though, unless you have lots of cash and a region-free player, downloading is the answer. Yay torrents.)