Robert Webb

The week in radio: Radio 2's Comedy Showcase review

Radio 2 doesn't often make me laugh - not intentionally, anyhow - but the station certainly does its bit for the joking business. Since 2011, it's been the home of the BBC new comedy award and its Comedy Showcase, which started in 2010, has developed several shows, some of which, such as Jason Byrne's Father Figure, have gone on to success. Last week, the Showcase was due to give us five new half-hour programmes, but one - The King's Men, with Robert Webb and Terry Mynott - was pulled because of the Paris attacks. I've heard it and can't quite understand why it's been vetoed (it's set in 1909, in London), but it concerns incompetent secret service agents and, at one point, there are the distant sounds of bombs in it. Anyway, if you want to hear it, it's on iPlayer. It's good.

As are the three other sitcoms in the Showcase (one set in a golf club, one about a nice young man and his bad dad, one centred around an older woman who's not happy with her lot). I liked them all; well crafted, well acted, with the requisite level of nuttiness. But it was the final programme, The Tim Vine Chat Show, which had me laughing the most. It's not a sitcom, it's a standup show, and its energy really fizzes from the radio.

Vine rattles out gags like Tommy Cooper: so many that, even if you don't think they're all funny, the cumulative effect is hilarious. He even forces in some awful jokes when he interviews members of the audience, and gets the whole room to join in some terrible catchphrases. It's a lovely way to spend half an hour.

Corbyn critic Robert Webb announces he has left Labour

Peep Show comedian says many members tell him he is not helping the party and he has decided to cancel his membership.

Josh could learn a lot from Peep Show as it contains a realistic central conceit and two characters who you can believe in. Even though I've found the last couple of series of David Mitchell and Robert Webb's sitcom to be rather mediocre it's still been consistently funny. This final series opened six months after Mark's beloved Dobby departed for New York partly thanks to Jeremy with the pair not having talked since. Reunited at Super Hans' stag do it was business as usual for the passive aggressive pair with Jeremy having been hit the most now living in the groom-to-be's bathroom. Mark meanwhile has seemingly moved on and is now living with his bank colleague Jerry (Tim Key) with the pair enjoying documentaries about William Morris on a nightly basis. But it's clear that Mark doesn't quite know how to quit Jez and by the end of the episode they were back together and Jerry had literally been rolled out of the door. Judging from this opening instalment of the last series Peep Show is going out on a high with both Mitchell and Webb at the top of their game. Mitchell is particularly strong as the mentally weak Mark who knows his relationship with Jeremy is no good for him but keeps going back to him nonetheless. Meanwhile Webb hasn't really changed his performance of Jez since the first series which I think is part of the character's charm. The end scene in which Mark, Jez and Super Hans bundle Jerry into the lift was a classic Peep Show moment and I was laughing all the way through it. I'm just wondering how writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong are going to end the series and more importantly if Mark and Jeremy are ever going to get their happy ending. In my opinion Peep Show isn't a sitcom that particularly necessitates a joyous conclusion but I wouldn't be opposed to see the El Dude Brothers finally experience some good fortune.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb return in the award-winning sitcom for a ninth - and final - series after a gap of almost three years. The show, set around a formerly flat-sharing odd couple, never quite attracted mainstream attention but retains a huge cult following and it is deservedly regarded as one of the best comedies around. Largely because of writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's unique gift for replicating the needy, self-deluding inner meanderings of the socially awkward mind.

The story picks up six months after Jeremy (Webb) scuppered Mark's (Mitchell) efforts to persuade his girlfriend Dobby to move in with him - with resentment still festering on both sides. But with Jeremy on the brink of homelessness he soon spots common-enemy potential in Mark's new flatmate Jerry (an excellent Tim Key). Add the fact that the once reliably psychotic Super Hans (Matt King) is attempting reform in the shape of "Sober Hans", and Mark's old boss Johnson (Paterson Joseph) has wangled him a job at a payday loan-style bank - and all the elements are in place for six final episodes of tearfully funny musings on human fallibility.

Peep Show series 9 spoiler-free preview

Ben Dowell got a sneak peek at the last ever series of the David Mitchell and Robert Webb comedy... and he wasn't disappointed.

Peep Show, TV review

Everything unravelled spectacularly for David Mitchell and Robert Webb in the first episode of the show's final hurrah.

End of Peep Show: 'Super Hans took the sofa' - video

At a Guardian Live preview screening of the final series of Peep Show, David Mitchell and Robert Webb reveal what they took from the set and we find out who got the coveted horse biscuit tin. Mitchell and Webb were joined by writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain and chair Julia Raeside from The Guardian to discuss the final series of Peep Show at a Guardian Members' event at the Greenwood Theatre, London, on 5 November 2015.

Radio Times review

Some of the best Peep Show moments are when the gang go on the road and this trip to East Anglia for Super Hans's wedding is no exception. Dobby (Isy Suttie) has finally come back from New York - but with a smug American boyfriend in tow, to the intense irritation of Mark (David Mitchell).

Jez (Robert Webb) has to reflect on a rather surprising personal discovery that isn't a secret for very long, thanks to the hidden cameras Mark has secreted inside the flat (well, it is called Peep Show after all). Who will be Hans's best man? Will he manage to get through his big day without hitting anyone? And what is his real name? All is revealed in another painfully funny riot of a ride.

David Mitchell and Robert Webb on their last hurrah

Nine series in and it's the closing curtain for Channel 4's beloved sitcom, Peep Show. As the usual mayhem ensues, Gemma Dunn talks to the stars about their less than sentimental end, objecting to Twitter and their plans for the future.

David Mitchell: 'POV is a stupid way to film' - video

At a Guardian Live preview screening of the final series of Peep Show, David Mitchell and Robert Webb explain why the show's trademark point-of-view filming method was a terrible idea - something that became clear one afternoon while driving round a roundabout in Croydon...

Mitchell and Webb were joined by writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain to discuss the final series of Peep Show at a Guardian Members' event at the Greenwood Theatre, London, on 5 November 2015.