Sam Bain

Fresh Meat's writers on their toga-party student days

Kitchen slugs, bathroom blazes, bodies in lakes ... as the anarchic campus comedy returns, its writers remember the wild (and not so wild) times that inspired the show.

It has been more than four years since the gang enrolled at Manchester Medlock University, and with graduation looming it's almost time for the student sitcom's japes and dramas to come to an end. As with their other hit series, Peep Show, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain seem determined not to let this one bow out quietly, though: the fourth and final series kicks off with Vod trying out a risky moneymaking scheme and resident rah JP getting a lesson in nepotism from older brother Tomothy.

Radio Times review

So, after nine series, this is the last-ever Peep Show. Creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong make every scene and every word count in a final, hilarious dose of era-ending, squirm-inducing mayhem.

Will Robert Webb and David Mitchell's El Dude Brothers, Jez and Mark, suddenly become Trotter-style winners? Will Jez and Super Hans succeed with their outrageous plot to get April's husband Angus out of the way? Will Jez face 40 without lying to his boyfriend?

While die-hard fans probably already have a good idea about the answers to these and other questions, they will not be disappointed by the excruciating, downbeat brilliance of this fabulous curtain call. This is a classic comedy that will be sorely missed.

Super Hans' real name revealed - or do they?

Writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong say the truth might not be so simple, even though series nine episode two appears to confirm his real name.

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.

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong on comedy endings

Peep Show has been running along on Channel 4 for 12 years. Is there anything its co-creators still haven't done to Mark and Jeremy?

Was episode one of Peep Show really a return to form?

The return of Johnson is most welcome and we're hoping he'll feature prominently in every episode. Are you hearing this, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong?

Peep Show - series 9, episode 1 review

This opening episode is basically a reset button to put the characters back where they need to be, but it's written with the elegance that cements Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's legacy. Their script nips between big set pieces with savvy dialogue that fizzes with gags and wry asides, while making viewers cringe at the appallingly self-serving antics of the anti-heroes that we now know so well.

Thank you, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. Thank you for providing a necessary psychological safety valve in the form of Jeremy and Mark, for allowing us to realise that our inner monologues demand we be as manipulative and shallow as those of Croydon's best worst people.

You are hard pressed to find better exemplars of modern Blighty, ones ahead of their time, than Jeremy and Mark. Jeremy the entitled egotist, whose life was singularly social long before social networks stuffed humility into a sack with bricks and dropped it into a canal. Mark, for whom the status quo is the band but what really should be preserved, the dull nag of logic to prevent a third pint on Monday night. Mark, the plug switch to Jeremy's amp.

One part of this show's genius is, like The Simpsons, its array of secondary characters, from Big Suze to Johnson to Toni to Nancy and finally to Super Hans, south London's Loki. It's the reformed caner's stag do which reunites Jeremy and Mark for the first time in six months, their combined selfishness leading to a binge and beer waterboarding. Cherish these awful, inspired moments.