Sam Bain

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.

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.

Things improved radically on Friday with the return of Channel 4's best comedy in the history of laughter. Yes! Peep Show's back!! I only discovered this gem last year but the complete DVD collection now sits proudly displayed on my shelf and I'm reliably informed that makes me immediately cool so way hey!

Most shows entering their fifth series would be showing signs of aging and losing the edge that made them so intriguing but that's not so here. Thanks to the surreal brains of writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain and the always wonderful performances from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, Peep Show appears to be going from strength to strength at a stage when other shows wilt under the pressure.

The world of Peep Show is surreal, of course, but the scripts and acting draw you into the world of Mark and Jez so well you don't want to leave. David Mitchell recently said he'd like Peep Show to carry on for years and, if this is the standard they can keep it to, I'd be happy about that too.

As we return for the fifth series of this engagingly filthy comedy, Mark (David Mitchell) is getting drunk and maudlin on wedding champagne as his flatmate Jeremy (Robert Webb) urges him to go out on a double-date: Beggars can't be choosers, she's an actual woman.

Mark - remember, this is a man who once based his romantic strategy on the Siege of Stalingrad - arms himself with a copy of the Friends of the British Museum magazine and goes forth again to search for love...

I adore Peep Show and I adore Mark and Jeremy, an amiable pair of misfits trapped in a squalid, mutually destructive friendship. Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's script is packed with the kind of quotable funny lines that should be on T-shirts, and Mitchell and Webb are both just marvellous.

Written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show, The Thick of It) and boasting a pedigree cast, which includes Reece Shearsmith, Darren Boyd and Rosie Cavaliero, the second in this commendable comic endeavour doesn't quite deliver the laughs you might expect. The tale of a houseshare in Victorian London, it is silly and clever and marvellously parodies the conventions, characters and cliches of Victorian fiction. With relatives on deathbeds, frustrated spinsters only occupied with embroidery and ebullient doctors, it provides some smirks but there are no laugh-out-loud moments.

A Victorian sitcom. It sounds like an irresistible premise, and the fact that it's written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong only serves to increase the anticipation. But if Ladies And Gentlemen - the second in C4's season of six sitcom pilots - doesn't quite work, there's still a huge amount to enjoy.