Jesse Armstrong

You'd think that Sophie revealing the father of her baby would make for a spectacular enough denouement but this goes one step beyond, thanks to a tissue of baby-related lies Jez has told to the latest apple of his eye and the fact that a malfunctioning boiler is causing Mark to hit, um, boiling point. Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's script is on particularly good form tonight, with Jez's poem F*** You Bush a corkingly stupid highlight.

Of course, for many of us, this week was not just some normal, ho-hum weeky week: as unremarkable as April 7-14, say, or, I dunno, February 19-26 inclusive. No. This week was Peep Show week. The return of the sitcom locked in a permanent, and fabulous, battle of champions with The Thick of It to be the definitive show of what we must, still, sighingly, refer to as "the Noughties". Peep and Thick are like the John McEnroe and Björn Borg of comedy - sometimes one triumphs, sometimes the other, but for miles and miles around there's no real competition. No competition at all. That one writer - Jesse Armstrong - works on both lends the very real possibility that he might be the funniest person in Britain.

I'm not in the habit of suggesting that the Government should forcibly take sperm samples from scriptwriters, and keep them in a cryogenic vault, in the event of a "comedy emergency" in which everyone funny dies, and we need to restock Britain's gag-writing ability with a concerted breeding programme. But, you know, it might be worth bearing in mind.

As series six starts, Peep Show's profile - once so "cult" that its future looked perilous - has never been higher. The inexorable rise of David Mitchell - thinking lady's beaky sex-penguin du jour - means that even the show's first trailer was subject to mass excitement on Twitter. When we last saw Jez (Robert Webb) and Mark (David Mitchell), they had just found out that either one of them might be the father of Sophie's (Olivia Colman) forthcoming baby. This is an usually "big" plot for the show - after all, even when Super Hans (Matt King) got addicted to crack ("That stuff is more-ish!"), it didn't really take up more than six or seven gags.

Within minutes of the first episode opening, more "big" stuff has happened - Mark has got the terminally feckless Jez a job at his company, JLB - but then JLB goes bust. The sexy business dick Alan Johnson (Paterson Joseph, playing one of the all-time amazing sitcom characters) comes to deliver the bad news: "I just got in from Aberdeen. JLB no longer exists. Thank you, Britain, and good night!" and then is driven away at top speed in a company car.

"That's the last Beemer out of Saigon," Mark sighs. The problem was that, as the episode went on, I noted, with mounting terror, that I wasn't really ... laughing. Yeah, there were a couple of nodding smiles, and the "Beemer" line got what would, on a Laugh Graph, be called "a snorty chuckle", but ... the usual, glorious, abandoned fug of a) borderline hysteria and b) intense emotional anguish, caused by minutely observed cases of total t***tishness, wasn't descending.

I was looking a cataclysm in the face: that Peep Show might have "gone off". We've all got to stop being funny some time. Maybe this was their time. Maybe it was all. Over. Or - maybe it was just a bad opening episode? So I rang people. I blagged. I cried. I sent a courier that cost £38. I got episode 2 sent over, and sat down to watch it in a state of pre-emptive tension rivalled only by the day before my C-section. And oh, thank God - episode 2 is one of the best episodes yet. Mark and Jez have a debate about the temperature setting on a boiler that is less like dialogue, more like an MRI scan of the idiot human brain. Then, later, Jez gets to deliver the line, "I'm a feminist - so I believe women should have any mad thing they want." It's all going to be OK. It's all still amazing. When The Thick of It comes back next month, the skies will be, once again, filled with the boom and clatter of their glorious rivalry.

Good on Channel 4 for keeping faith with Peep Show, despite viewing figures so small they can barely be seen with the naked eye. Now entering a sixth series, socially inept and emotionally stunted flatmates Mark and Jeremy (David Mitchell and Robert Webb) are trying not to think about the inescapable fact that one of them is the father of pregnant Sophie's baby. Wails Mark, "The baby is too big. You can't look at it. It's like the sun." It's up to the decrepit, drug-addled Super Hans (Matt King), who looks increasingly like a monster in a German Expressionist film, to keep the boys from one another's throats. But Mark's world turns to ashes when there's a fire drill at his office and the egregious Johnson (Paterson Joseph) makes an announcement in the car park. If you know little of Peep Show, then probably nothing short of the offer of a free cruise will persuade you to watch it. If you love it, rest assured, age has not wearied writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's perfect little blackly comic gem.

The return of one of the finest ever sitcoms in the history of the world ever - fact! Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's darkly comical flat share work of genius starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb is on tip top form as ever. Considering it's on its sixth series, that's no mean feat. Brilliant, inspired stuff!

Peep Show to return for seventh series

Channel 4 has commissioned a seventh series of Bafta-winning sitcom Peep Show before the sixth series has even aired. C4 entertainment and comedy head Andrew Newman confirmed that Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's sitcom would return for a further series, which is slated for next year. It is next due on screens this summer.

Final episode of the sitcom from writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. It's sharply written as you'd expect from the writers of the unassailable Peep Show, and Swift and Lloyd-Pack make an engaging double act that deserve a second series. And Jane Asher is in it, so what's not to like?

The final episode of this so-so sitcom features its main characters, two single elderly men, competing for the affections of a Belarusian prostitute in Soho - a plotline that's a long way from Galton and Simpson, to say the least. But then, this is the Noughties, and writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong were also behind the enjoyably risqué Peep Show.

It's not Withnail And I, but this gentle comedy from Peep Show creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong has proved a hit.

Coming from the comedy genius minds of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show) and Simon Blackwell (The Thick Of It), we were hoping for Peep Show with a Bus Pass and Arthritis. And we almost got it. But the tone was wrong (nowhere near dark enough or real enough) and, instead of being fresh and funny, it was just another humdrum BBC1 sitcom.

There's more realism in The Old Guys than Not Going Out, within the comic boundaries that allow characters to bet on holding off going to the toilet and then when becoming desperate, decide to go in the kitchen sink, whereupon they are caught by an entire party of guests. But at least the leads, Roger Lloyd Pack (Trigger in Only Fools And Horses) and Clive Swift (Richard in Keeping Up Appearances) are very experienced actors who make their performances seem natural.

It's written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, who also write the brilliant Peep Show, and the lazy description is that the old guys are Mark and Jeremy grown older but no wiser. The odd couple - conventional guy, crazy guy - is such a perennial set up because it works, but while this ticked along pleasantly, the jokes just didn't seem to be there.

Of course, BBC Scotland already has another pensioner sitcom in Still Game, which has a sense of place and a specific culture to play off that, so far, The Old Guys lacks.