Peep Show

Peep Show turns 10

Michael Hogan looks back over the past decade to see why Peep Show has become the longest-running sitcom in Channel 4's history.

20 rules of flatsharing according to Peep Show, in GIFs

Peep Show is a decade old this week - and these are the vital life lessons vis a vis doing the washing up the Channel 4 comedy has taught us.

After 2010's slightly flabby and directionless seventh series, it was great to see Peep Show get back to its best this year. The storylines were tighter, the writing wittier and the series blessed with pitch-perfect performances from the entire cast. From Jez's meltdown at the psychiatrist's to Mark using a biography of Napoleon as makeshift lavatory paper, Peep Show series 8 was a memorable one even by the show's own high standards.

It's showdown time. Jez's crush on Dobby was bound to bring him to blows with Mark. And Mark has turned into a time-bomb of control-freakery, fixated on getting Dobby to live with him, whatever the cost. It comes to a rampantly silly climax involving a "kangaroo court of love" and the world's most joyless picnic.

First, though, Mark ventures into about the worst place he could go - a game of five-a-side football. ("That was too hard! Someone's going to get hurt if you kick it that hard!") And Jez moves in to Super Hans's flat, "the black hole of Cal-nutter", which, in the space of a few lines, is established as one of the worst places to live imaginable. "We do peg and re-use the tea bags" is the least of it.

A brilliantly unseasonal Christmas Eve treat as the excellent latest run of Peep Show concludes. Peep Show continues to boast the narrative dynamics of a cartoon - for the series to continue, Mark and Jez have to end up back where they started. Jez has moved in with Super Hans ('welcome to the Black Hole of Cal-nutter') but has been allotted a room inexplicably full of snakes. Meanwhile, Mark's excruciating pursuit of Dobby continues, although a spanner has been thrown into the works by the possibility of an offer she can't refuse. But will Jez scupper this weird, mutually destructive yet symbiotic friendship once and for all by confessing his love for Mark's paramour? She's probably too good for both of them. The longer this goes on, the more likely it feels that these two will end up like Steptoe and son.

Another comic peek at the inner lives of hopeless men. Failed-musician-turned-life-coach Jez is under the writers' cosh this week. There's a lovely moment when he packs up to move out of Mark's flat and is horrified at how pathetic his worldly goods are: "How can that be all my stuff?" Mark's sister offers a place to stay, but she turns out to be using him as a sort of childcare slave.

Mark, meanwhile, does a brilliantly over-the-top pitch to be chairperson of his residents' committee ("A new dawn for Apollo House"), and listen out for a great dig at The Killing.

Peep Show series 8 episode 5: Chairman Mark

The penultimate episode of this run of Peep Show is another belter. Here's Louisa's review...

Having Jez fall in love with Dobby has been the genius idea of the latest series of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's never-disappointing sitcom, which climaxes tonight in some pretty unsavoury places - not least Super Hans's flat. Dobby (the splendid Isy Suttie) is offered a job in New York, but should she stay or should she go?

Opinion: is Peep Show Series 8 the best yet?

Any comedy lumbering into its eighth series usually faces accusations of becoming stale and tired, but Peep Show doesn't have to worry about that: it's barely managed to rustle up a single negative review since it initially aired way back in 2003.