Jesse Armstrong

If I hadn't known that new Saturday night sitcom The Old Guys was from Peep Show pair Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, would I have given it the time of day? Probably not. At first glance this was just another variant on the Odd Couple theme: mismatched housemates bitch and bicker, the twist being that this pair had one foot in the grave.

And there was certainly a touch of the Meldrews about Tom and Roy as they railed against a future that promised prostrates the size of Spacehoppers and joked about who'd get Alzheimer's first. But there was a touching hint of vulnerability amid the black comedy and a script that refreshing refused to dumb down for a mainstream Saturday night audience. "I don't want my daughter to take me to the toilet - it's not a Ken Loach film!" declared Tom, flying deliriously over the heads of his viewers.

The old guys in The Old Guys are engaged in a sedate but still desperate competition to appear less old than they are, and, specifically, less old than each other. In the first of this new sitcom, the pair institute a competition to prove which has the stronger bladder. Caught short at their neighbour Sally's party, Tom and Roy end up peeing in her kitchen sink. Fortunately they get away with this and no one notices. Oh, no they don't! Sally discovers them mid-leak. Reaction shot. Cue music, applause and credits.

I was hoping for a little more from Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the creators of the blissful Peep Show. But although their subject is age, this is a piece of juvenilia, brought to the screen many years after its first drafts. Happily for us, but sadly for the show, comedy has moved on in the meantime. Thanks to Peep Show, among other programmes, it is now twice as hard to make work a multicamera, two-set sitcom, videoed in front of a live audience. Thanks also to Peep Show, we expect comedy characterisation to go deeper than tired divisions between tidy and slobby, introvert and extrovert. At the moment, the best ways to read nuance into the pair is to imagine that Tom, played as a decayed but still snobbish student by Roger Lloyd Pack, is an older version of Peep Show's Jeremy. That would make Clive Swift's Roy, for whom a cravat is never out of the question, Mark.

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.

Sound the trumpets: it's a new sitcom from writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the team behind Channel 4's wonderful, Bafta-winning Peep Show. And they haven't strayed far from that show's premise: two blokes living together and getting on each other's nerves. The difference is age - this is Peep Show crossed with One Foot in the Grave, if you like.

Tom (Roger Lloyd-Pack) is a feckless baby-boomer, who has never quite left the 60s behind; Roy (Clive Swift) is more the old-style suburban pensioner. Their banter revolves around who will get Alzheimer's first, whose bladder is stronger and who has the better chance with glamorous neighbour Sally (Jane Asher).

The writing is as sharp as you'd expect and the performances might just gel into something special.

A new sitcom by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the writers of Channel 4's excellent if uncomfortably dark Peep Show. Their new creation - which is about the misadventures of two elderly friends, played by Roger Lloyd Pack and Clive Swift - is warmer, but anarchic none the less.

Any new sitcom by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the sharp brains behind the excellent Peep Show is going to be worth a look, and this could have the makings of a classic. Roger-Lloyd Pack and Clive Swift star as the mismatched Tom and Roy, one a baby boomer who never left the 60s behind, the other an OAP with intellectual delusions of grandeur. Throw into the mix glamourous neighbour Sally (the still sexy as hell Jane Asher), who the boys have the hots for, and you have the makings of a classic sitcom. Fingers crossed...

Jessie Armstrong and Sam Bain's sitcom continues to plumb the darker depths of the human condition with blisteringly funny results.

Radio Times Blog

Peep Show is wonderful, a model of edgy comedy perfection, with sharply brilliant, misanthropic, literate scripts from writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and perfectly deadpan performances by David Mitchell and Robert Webb].

Unlike the patchy That Mitchell and Webb Look, Peep Show draws on the strengths of writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.

Mark and Jez's theatre visit produced some great lines - I can't believe coming here costs more than a film and If this was on television, nobody would be watching. There was a spot-on realism here that perhaps got lost in the outrageous antics of the last season.

The only question is: five series in, where is there for the characters to go? On the evidence of the opener, it should be fun finding out.

As always, the writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain have got our thought-processes exactly right. Not many people would vocalise these particular thoughts like Mark and Jez do on this occcasion, but, let's face it, we've all thought something similar. And that, above all else, is Peep Show's enduring success.