Robert Webb

Peep Show: why it's still the UK's best sitcom

As David Mitchell and Robert Webb return for a seventh series of Peep Show, Catherine Gee looks at how, after all these years, it's still getting laughs.

The outstanding Peep Show returns for a seventh bleakly comic series, and the first episode opens with Sophie in hospital on the verge of giving birth, and Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) are there to lend their 'support'. It turns out that Mark is more worried about a burst boiler in his flat and Jeremy only has eyes for fellow visitor Zahra, whose boyfriend is in a coma. But will he wake before Jezza gets his mucky mitts on her?

Is Mark Corrigan ready for fatherhood? Of course not - but he doesn't really have much choice in the matter.

As series seven opens, Sophie is on all fours in the delivery suite, screaming out for gas and air, a water birth, an epidural and, ideally, a less useless birthing partner.

There's every chance the baby will be an adult itself before Mark is grown up enough to deal with a responsibility like this - so there's no surprise tonight when he deals with the stress by hiding.

For self-obsessed man-child Jeremy, the hospital provides an unexpected opportunity for him to get over his ex when he meets another girl visiting her ­coma-stricken boyfriend.

That's just one of the many reasons to love Jeremy - he could be falling headfirst down an active volcano and his number one impulse would still be to scour the area for talent.

As a new arrival ushers in a whole new arena in which Mark and Jez can fail to shine, perhaps this will finally be the series when the nation discovers how to press the number 4 on their TVs, Peep Show makes the long overdue leap from cult hit to national treasure and David Mitchell, Robert Webb, writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and director Becky Martin are carried around the streets of London on golden sedan chairs. We can but dream.

Only Fools And Horses went downhill when Del and Raquel had a baby; will the same happen to our beloved Peep Show? Not likely, judging by this new series opener. While Mark (David Mitchell) waits anxiously in hospital for the birth of his unwanted progeny with Sophie (Olivia Colman), Jeremy (Robert Webb) swiftly gets over Elena when he meets Zahra, whose boyfriend is in a coma. Noooo!

Despite never attracting the wider audience it deserves, Peep Show - starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb as Mark and Jez, a latter-day flat-sharing odd couple - has from the outset maintained its reputation as one of the very best British sitcoms. Now entering its seventh season, it is also Channel 4's longest running comedy and, happily, shows no signs of falling off in quality. Quite the opposite; tonight's episode opens up a whole new vista of comic possibilities as Mark (Mitchell) marches none-too-enthusiastically across the Rubicon that is parenthood and, initially at least, doesn't respond well to the prospect of responsibility.

Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's scalpel-sharp script brilliantly exposes the average male's helplessness, incomprehension and terror when confronted with the maternal agonies of childbirth - and the overwhelming urge to run away. Meanwhile, in a different wing of the hospital, Jez (Webb) seeks a cure for his recently broken heart in the shape of the attractively bookish partner of a comatose patient - with predictably cringe-making results.

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