Peep Show

I’ve just undergone a rather major lifestyle choice shift, going from someone who doesn’t watch Peep Show, to someone who’s nailed all nine series on Netflix in a matter of weeks.  For years, I found the concept of the show really off-putting, despite countless recommendations in the office that it was right up my street.  From what I could see, it was about two losers.  British folk love an underdog, they say, but I think I chase success like a wasp hounds a picnic of jam sandwiches.  If our heroes were unsuccessful, then surely I would root for the bad guys, proving to everyone that I was an evil psychopath after all.  Say what you like about bad folk, they’ve got the ambition, drive and get-up-and-go to crack on with those bad acts in the first place.  The two men at the heart of Peep Show, from the trailers I’d seen, seemed to whinge about things not going their way and then do little to take matters into their own hands.

What, then, possessed me to dive into a show 15 years after its debut, selecting it from a Netflix menu that I’ve all but given up hope of ever completing?  Truth be told, my current flatshare doesn’t have access to much TV beyond Netflix (how I miss the old Sky Plus) so my options are limited.  In addition, I’ve made my way through a high volume of glossy American drama in recent times (from House Of Cards to Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina).  I wanted something British.  And not just a bit British, with just our silly accents and some rain.  No, I wanted filthy British.  I wanted humour that was inaccessible to other parts of the world.  I wanted character actors in lead roles.  I wanted locations so banal I wouldn’t even notice if I had walked past them hundreds of times.  I wanted to be depressed by our soggy island, but then I wanted to chuckle at clever British writers exposing its ridiculousness.

Suddenly, everything that had put me off was part of its appeal.  And appeal it did do.  It did it loads.  Transported back to a 2003 world of clamshell phones and actual CDs, I was immediately charmed.  For those that don’t know (which was me until recently) Peep Show focuses on two flatmates who waste their lives while going about most things the wrong way, with most things usually being trying to get girls to go out with them.  So astoundingly relatable are the two protagonists, that I firmly believe that the whole population of the world can be split into Mark Corrigans and Jeremy Usbournes.  If you ever feel uptight, paralysed by indecision and the modern world constantly disappoints, then you’re a Mark, bulging at the eyes in frustration and disgust until such a chance arises that you can hide inside with some red wine, a book on Byzantine history, and the heating on 21 degrees (and not higher).  If you’re a Jez, then you’ll sort things out later, you’re working on your art so someone else can take care of the boring stuff, you enjoy errant sexual pursuits and the modern world constantly disappoints.  In fact, if you’re a Jez, then you haven’t even read this far.

At once universal and disgusting, each episode builds up our false hope that Jez and Mark might just get themselves sorted, before unleashing sploshing disappointment, while each series of six episodes follows a more complicated, longer-term arc, that ultimately always lands them back just where they started.  The cumulative effect of working through their lives from 2003 to the final series in 2015 is that they go from young people who can’t be expected to know better, to chaps nudging into their forties who still don’t know any better.  Drug binges and orgies are replaced (or added to) by childcare and soft play, yet the disappointment of the modern world somehow hasn’t dampened everything.  Jez’s free spirit still hopes to crack the music scene, and Mark yearns to pen the definitive tome on the Byzantine church.

If you’ve ever done some growing up in the UK, then you’ll recognise yourself.  Cue cult status, compounded by the script’s relentless quotability: “I’m the Wolf of Wall Street. Look out, Boots! I’m going to buy 100 meal deals and eat them off a prossie in the nude.”  But Peep Show immerses you further in the sticky surfaces of its action by using point of view shots.  Mark and Jez both talk directly to the camera, making you, the viewer, the recipient of the line.  You then switch to be the other, which is why it’s easy to think of yourself as both of them.  You can get lost in David Mitchell’s dark dark eyes before alighting at his crooked lower teeth, or you can slide about on Robert Webb’s smug mug until, again, you arrive at the teeth and get a bit distracted.  I love them both and I love their teeth.  At first, I thought only core characters had their point of view used in this way, but it can happen to anyone, however incidental.  But we only hear Jez and Mark’s inner monologues, and this is the factor that drives the most proximity for me.

Throughout, a bevvy (horrendous word) of equally accurate female characters come and go as foils to the boys’ lechery, affection and dreams.  From Sophie, played deliciously by Olivia Colman (clearly enjoying herself – roll on her appearance in The Crown), to Big Suze, Dobby, Nancy and poor poor April.  It’s clear that nobody is doing great at life, despite first impressions.  You root for Jez and Mark to pair up happily with any of them, and yet you scream at the girls to run for their lives.  Inevitably, the only partnership that stands the test of time is Mark and Jez’s.  Some people say that the wrong friends can hold you back, but it’s more like Jez can hold you back.  Mark can never succeed, because Jez is there to drag him back.  But it’s more fun for us that way, and maybe more fun for Mark too.  There’s always someone worse, though, and we have Super Hans (about whom there is literally nothing super) to keep Jez from ever progressing to true adulthood.

So I hereby make this blog’s first apology.  I mean, probably, I haven’t checked if I’ve done one before.  Sorry to all those people who urged me to watched Peep Show.  All they got from me were sneers and scoffs.  They were right all along.  But I too was justified in waiting all this time.  I needed a bit of distance and only recently was the time right for me.  I’m fully ready now to confirm my status as a fan of Peep Show, ready to champion the cult classic to all comers.  I’m probably more of a Mark than a Jez, but I do have my Jez moments.  One of them was bingeing all nine series and not feeling guilty about it.  Just say you never met me.