Paterson Joseph

Interview: Paterson Joseph on Babylon

Joseph will star in Channel 4's big winter tent-pole drama Babylon as Deputy Commissioner Charles Inglis.

Peep Show series 6 episode 4 review

The mighty Paterson Joseph returns as Peep Show carries on delivering the laughs...

This sixth series of the sitcom about two hapless flatmates (played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb) continues to be consistently funny so it's good news for fans that a seventh has been commissioned. Tonight, Mark (Mitchell) finds out that Jeremy's (Webb) new Russian girlfriend Elena has a secret but can't bear to break his friend's happiness by spilling the beans. Meanwhile Johnson (Paterson Joseph) gives Mark more food for thought by asking him to go into business.

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.

Poor Paterson Joseph - despite the fact his belle Veronica (Rachael Stirling) shows no enthusiasm for their impending nuptials (that would be because Veronica is really Danny...), he's convinced she's just overwhelmed by his proposal. Yes, Boy Meets Girl has had its plot holes. But the reality-warping gender-swap comedy drama is at its finale now and overall it has worked well: Martin Freeman has done a gentle, tender job of revealing his feminine side while Stirling has been scene-stealingly blokey as Danny/Veronica. Tonight the pair finally meet, hatch a plan to return to their former selves and embroil themselves in a few surprising twists and turns along the way.

If you found yourself trapped in the wrong body, would anyone believe you? That's the predicament facing Veronica and Danny in week two of the sweetly subversive gender-swapping comedy.

Rachael Stirling still has the best time of it as she tries to get her new man's brain around the vagaries of fashion while fending off the romantic advances of her sock-ironing boyfriend Jay (Paterson Joseph).

For Martin Freeman, who now has the body of a DIY store worker and the mind of a frothy fashion journalist, life is an endless round of police cells as he doesn't even know his own name.

But he does know Veronica's name - so why doesn't he simply phone her, instead of constantly barging into her office and home like a total loon?

But there are two more weeks left, so the two leads must be kept apart a little longer. For now, enjoy their discomfort and some lovely performances as they discover how the other half lives.

Here's a turn-up for the books: a new ITV comedy miniseries that is both funnier and more original than its plot description - a woman and a man swapping bodies after being struck by lightning - suggests. Much of the credit for that goes to the leads, Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling, both of whom play their alter-ego roles with enough aplomb to keep the plot afloat - he as a successful fashion journalist called Veronica trapped inside the body of a lazy conspiracy theorist called Danny; she as the reverse. The focus in this opening episode is more on Stirling's character (female body, male mind) as she attempts to use her new journalistic contacts to find Danny, while simultaneously fending off the advances of her boyfriend Jay (Paterson Joseph).

Danny Reed is a woman trapped in a man's body. Or is it the other way around? Martin Freeman and Rachael Stirling star in this gender-swapping switcheroo comedy where, after a lightning strike, two strangers wake up to find that they've traded places.

Although Martin Freeman is the better known of the two, it's Stirling - best known for her role in Tipping The Velvet as well as for being Diana Rigg's daughter - who gets the lion's share of screen time in this first episode.

With the body of Veronica but the brain of Danny, her reactions as she - or he - discovers she now has a handsome boyfriend (Peep Show's Paterson Joseph) and a luxury apartment are a wonderful mixture of horror and delight.

Mind you, not even a lightning strike can explain why the front page story on the local Manchester newspaper Veronica works for is about a traffic jam in Dublin.

As Danny and Veronica try to find their missing selves, this four-parter has a lot in common with ITV's recent hit Lost In Austen, because once Danny has stopped playing with his own breasts, he sees all the tosh women supposedly have to put up with and he's having none of it. In that respect, you can tell it was written by a man.

But while the cliches are impossible to avoid - and we'd feel cheated if they weren't there - they're handled deftly enough to sweep you along.

If you can cope with the fact that the central idea is completely barmy (and come on, there's no crime in that), then you should find this new Friday night comedy-drama series a whole lot of fun.

There are plenty of familiar faces popping up in the cast, including Angela Griffin and Marshall Lancaster (Ashes To Ashes) as Danny's DIY store colleagues, plus Paterson Joseph (Peep Show) and James Lance (Moving Wallpaper) as fashion journalist Veronica's boyfriend and lover respectively.