Peep Show

15 times 'Peep Show' summed up horrors of growing up

In celebration of the return of one the the greatest British comedies ever, here's a reminder of just how terrible it is to be a grown up...

Peep Show series 9 episode 1 review

So, here we are... back with the El Dude Brothers for one final ride aboard the perennial train wreck that is their lives.

Are you Peep Show's Mark or Jez? (or Super Hans?)

You may think you're a fully functioning human, but everyone has an awkward, disastrous Peep Show side to them...

It's three years since series eight, yet Mark and Jez must remain forever young, so as the final run starts we're only six months on from Dobbygeddon. Mark arrives at Super Hans's stag do still despising his old flatmate: he's unmoved when he then sees the spectacular low that is Jez's new gaff. Will he stick with cartoonishly cardiganed replacement bro Jerry (Tim Key), or let Jez come home? Kenco and William Morris, or Twirls and Octopussy? A relatively restrained opener but it still hums with disgustingly funny lines.

The life lessons Peep Show has taught us

We've learned much following the travails of Mark, Jez, Soph, Hans, Dobby, Johnson and co, not least of which are the dangers of skinning up with your feet and which colour bread is 'pudding'.

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 and the stigma of flat-sharing in your 40s

The flatmate comedy Peep Show is ending as its lead actors approach middle age. Why are fortysomethings in shared accommodation still seen as unusual when their numbers are rising so dramatically?

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 final series - episode 1 review

"The duo's desperate world is so ludicrously depressing it's impossible not to laugh"

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?