Peep Show

UKTV acquires 'Peep Show' for Dave

UKTV has agreed a deal with Channel 4 for 30 hours of entertainment and factual programming, including hit comedy Peep Show for Dave.

Your next box set: Peep Show

Watching 900 minutes of Peep Show in the space of three weeks really reveals the gruesome, brilliant ebb and flow at its heart.

In Peep Show, Jeremy and Mark venture outdoors - to the park for a picnic to celebrate Elena and Gail's forthcoming nuptials, and later, to the country. I'm not sure Mark and Jeremy really belong outside; certainly not in the countryside.

It's a beautiful finale, though, with all the disappointment, inappropriate-ness and sorry truths you would have wished for. And wonderful, wonderful lines. This series has been an absolute treat, the best yet. Can it really be over so soon? I guess there's something appropriate about the end of Peep Show coming too soon. But where are the chuckles going to come from now? Ah, The Thick of It starts tonight, that's where.

Peep Show: season six, episode six

Well what a series it has been - and it climaxes with another cracking episode, featuring a cliffhanger and, of all things, a stunt.

Peep Show Episode 6.6 Review

The finale to this excellent sixth series wasn't the perfect ending I was primed for, but the last five minutes were as close to comedy bliss as one could hope - if slightly undermined by a lack of resolution.

Last in the simply superb sixth series. The nuptials of Elena and Gail draw close, but Jeremy still holds out hope. Meanwhile Mark, fearing Jeff will usurp him, takes driving lessons so he can ferry his gestating former wife to hospital at the crucial hour. With series seven currently under construction, it's comforting to know it isn't the last we'll see of these most excruciating antiheroes. Performances, writing, drum-tight plotting: it's all gone up a notch this year. In the words of Partridge, "Come back Peep Show and play another song."

It's sadly the last in the series of the sharp-witted sitcom and Mark (David Mitchell) is worried that Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice) is becoming a potential rival father to his unborn child. So he decides to learn to drive in order that he can take Sophie (Olivia Colman) to the hospital when the baby arrives.

The finale of this latest series ends on a cliffhanger but not before boiling point is reached when Mark's lies about passing his driving test bite him on the backside. With an unwanted baby and an unresolvable love triangle testing the patience of our anti-heroes, this has probably been the bleakest series yet (tonight Mark seriously considers a one-way ticket to Argentina and a face transplant for the sake of his sanity). Nonetheless, it's also been an absolute hoot.

When you're a Peep Show lover, it can be baffling that more people don't fall down and worship one of the current 24-carat gems of British sitcom. More than a million viewers return to it each week, but in telly terms that makes it a cult rather than a roaring hit. You wouldn't be surprised if half those regulars spent their days proselytising, trying to win converts to the cult, one viewer at a time, but I've a feeling it's no use: Peep Show is destined to remain an underappreciated, filthy, sharp-witted, semi-hidden gem. Tonight's final episode (of what's been a belting series) starts in low gear, but ends up as fabulously farcical as ever. Mark is alarmed enough about becoming a father, without the dreaded Jeff trying to edge him out and mum Sophie threatening to call the child Tarquin Oliver Nimrod, a name that sounds, as Mark moans, like "the member of a decaying European dynasty". To earn naming rights, he agrees to learn to drive so he can take Sophie to the hospital on the big day. It's a process that goes almost as badly as Jez's attempt to put the kibosh on Elena's wedding. In other words, not well.

The current crop of Friday night comedies really define the channels they're on. And Peep Show is quintessential Channel 4 - original, daring, current and appreciated only by a tiny minority.

Another series has absolutely flown by and the final episode brings Jez and Mark to yet another crossroads in their perpetually disappointing lives. Sophie is about to give birth to Mark's baby (Tarquin? Geoffrey?) and Elena, the current love of Jez's life, is about to marry her girlfriend, Gail. While Super Hans makes another brief, but brilliant appearance, Mark is persuaded to take driving lessons so that he can drive Sophie to hospital when the time comes, and Jez finds himself fighting off murderous impulses to kill Gail.

In years to come, Peep Show will be seen as the pinnacle of comedy it obviously is. In the meantime, there's series seven to look forward to.