Sharply created and sharply acted new characters – the frisky historian April (Catherine Shepherd, reprising a brief role from 2004) and her lugubrious theologian husband Angus (Angus Wright) – converge with the 12-year veterans as the scriptwriters demonstrate their absolute confidence in the plotting of dark farce and writing of cruelly self-deluding dialogue. Having now watched every episode of Peep Show, I think that Armstrong and Bain have judged their exit lines perfectly. Who is your favouriteWelcome to the official Peep Show channel.
Less happily, The West Wing (1999-2006, NBC) ultimately succumbed to a fatal dose of the saccharine to which it had always been partial, and Lost (2004-10, ABC) imploded in a sentimentality of a different kind with a payoff of meta-physical silliness.ĭeliberately or accidentally, Bain and Armstrong have followed the model of Sex and the City (1998-2004, HBO) and Friends (1994-2004, NBC) by bringing the main characters back to the apartment and basic situation with which everything started, although where SATC waited until very near the end to reveal Big’s first name (John), Peep Show exposed Matt King’s magnificent Super Hans as a Simon on his birth certificate in the opening show of the final run. From Gog to The Snake, Peep Show has had some of the best one off characters over the years.
The Sopranos (1999-2007, HBO) ended on a note of violent ambiguity that is generally felt to have been fitting, while One Foot in the Grave (1990-2000, BBC) boldly ignited the final word of its title and vindicated the pessimism of its protagonist, Richard Wilson’s Victor Meldrew. All of those shows suffered from the multiplying encouragement in television to leave any series, no matter how discrete the first storyline seemed, open to the possibility of coming back. Several recent controversies over crash-landings have related to season finales that were irritatingly open-ended, including The Affair (Sky Atlantic), Doctor Foster (BBC1) and London Spy (BBC2). One advantage for Armstrong and Bain is that they are closing down a whole show rather than a mere series.
YOU TUBE PEEP SHOW SERIES
Tonight on Channel 4, after 54 episodes in nine series screened since 2003, Peep Show reaches the end of the runway, meaning that Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are the latest writers – and David Mitchell and Robert Webb, as ageing flatmates Mark and Jeremy, the latest actors – to come under pressure to deliver the perfect credits line, the ideal 10.30pm scene. If the final episode of the season of a drama or comedy – or, still worse, the final ever programme of the franchise – doesn’t finish convincingly, then much of the pleasure or success that went before can be compromised by the perceived failure, in industry jargon, to “land” the show well. This pressure for a perfect ending is increasingly spreading to television.
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