Main News Stories About 'Peep Show':

• Channel 4 orders two more series of Peep Show (16/12/10)

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.

Tom Cole, Radio Times, 26th December 2012

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.

Phil Harrison, Time Out, 24th December 2012

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.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 24th December 2012

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...

Written by Louisa Mellor. Den of Geek, 23rd December 2012

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.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 23rd December 2012

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?

Gerard Gilbert, The Independent, 22nd December 2012

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.

Written by Hilary Wardle. Giggle Beats, 19th December 2012

Peep Show series 8 episode 4 review

While there's still so much fun to be had with Peep Show's script, griping about holey plots and recycled set-ups feels - what's the word? Ungrateful. With only two episodes of the current series left, I plan to savour every remaining minute.

Written by Louisa Mellor. Den of Geek, 18th December 2012

DVD: Peep Show - series 8

The greatest TV sitcom ever made - but how long can it go on for?

Written by Howard Male. The Arts Desk, 18th December 2012

"Come on fate! This can't be right!" pleads Mark as Peep Show's merciless writers find new ways to humiliate him - this time by making Super Hans his boss. Mind you, it's never hard to make Mark (David Mitchell) feel angry and defeated. Dobby manages it just by giving him a couscous salad to take to work - or "My Tupperware box full of tasteless misery sand", as Mark prefers to think of it.

The couple's wildly different priorities are illustrated by the fact that Dobby (Isy Suttie) wants the pair of them to go inter-railing for a few months, while Mark would rather be taking evening classes for an MBA. It's another sharply written, horribly funny episode.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 16th December 2012

Is Series 8 of Peep Show the best ever?

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.

Written by Hilary Wardle. The Huffington Post, 15th December 2012

Have You Been Watching... Peep Show?

Jez's failure to get a life coaching certificate from a Mickey Mouse accrediting body run by a woman he'd slept with - combined with Mark's equally crushing defeat at the hands of a fake publishing agent - was Peep Show gold, but the third episode somehow managed to be even better.

Written by Hilary Wardle. TV Jam, 13th December 2012

Peep Show series 8 episode 3: The Love Bunker

Peep Show delivers its take on the paintballing episode, and it's a good'un. Here's Louisa's review...

Written by Louisa Mellor. Den of Geek, 10th December 2012

After an ill-fitting touch of role reversal in the opening two episodes, all is once again as it should be with the Peep Show lot. Superhans is back on the drugs, Jez has decided he fancies Mark's girlfriend, and Mark - after a vaguely sinister start to the series - has reverted to his excessively anxious and bitter best. A paintball outing with Simon, Dobby's ex, is the perfect setting for Mark's militaristic introspection, and while he's left cowering in a bunker with Superhans, Jez is smoking weed with Dobby and offering the Ofcom-baiting confession that he's 'been basically bored since 9/11'. But even these moments can't match the highlight of the season so far: Mark attempting to play a party game that involves guessing the names of popular bands ('If it's not Snow Patrol or The Beatles, I am so fucked') in front of Simon, his latest nemesis. One of the series's finest half-hours.

David Clack, Time Out, 9th December 2012

When Peep Show is on this kind of form it's like a perfect toy you want to play with forever. Tonight, writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong work in so many great lines - mainly for the twisted inner thoughts of Mark and Jez - that you may need to pause the TV to allow for laughing time.

Mark's worries about someone stealing girlfriend Dobby have switched from Gerard (RIP) to her ex, Simon. The latter organises a paintballing day for his birthday, and keeps Dobby suspiciously close. ("Holding hands?!" Mark notes, furiously. "That's not military! I'm pretty sure Rommel never held hands!")

Then Mark gets stranded in a bunker with drug-addled team-mate Superhans and a dog-eared biography of Napoleon. The latter proves more help.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 9th December 2012

Mark Corrigan: Business secrets of the pharaohs

Following the publication by British London of his first book, GQ revisits an exclusive extract from Mark Corrigan about how the ancient Eygptians can help you manage your team, your time and your "pyramids" more effectively.

Written by Jesse Armstrong. GQ, 5th December 2012

I think the best way to start the review of this programme is with the following statement: Peep Show is better than Father Ted.

I know that according to Channel 4's Greatest Comedy Show Father Ted's is better, but it's wrong. It's merely more popular. Peep Show's funnier because of the writing, the plot devices, the innovative camera work, the quality of the performances and the darkness of the humour and characters. Peep Show may never have attracted more than 2 million viewers for a single episode, but the quality of it stands.

Peep Show returned with its usual mix of darkness and desperation, thanks to the struggling lives of flatmates Mark and Jez (David Mitchell and Robert Webb). At the start of this series, Mark is trying to get Jez out of the flat so his love Dobby (Isy Suttie) can move in. Mark's plans are so desperate; he even thinks breaking Dobby's microwave will help. Also, Mark gets a job tip from - of all people - Super Hans (Matt King), Jez decides to undergo therapy, and the health of Mark's love rival Gerrard (Jim Howick) takes a turn for the worse.

There's so much to like in this opening episode, including Jez's somewhat paranoid display when he attends his therapy session, to the horrifying consequences which result when Mark tries to prevent Isy from seeing Gerrard. One interesting plot device which seems to be sprouting is Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice), now living with Sophie (Olivia Colman), getting a bit too close to Mark's baby son Ian for his liking...

Ian Wolf, Giggle Beats, 3rd December 2012

Peep Show series 8 episode 2 review

The roles are reversed in this week's middling but enjoyable episode of Peep Show...

Written by Louisa Mellor. Den of Geek, 2nd December 2012

The quality control of Peep Show remains remarkably high: it's tough to think of too many British sitcoms that reach an eighth series in such fine fettle. Much of the pleasure has been in watching the glacial evolution of Mark and Jeremy and their reluctant engagement with the adult world, which reaches pitiful new levels tonight as Jeremy trains to become a life coach (Mark: 'it's better than some of your job ideas - like being an admiral') and Mark's new book, Business Secrets of the Pharaohs, is picked up by a small publisher with a cashflow problem. Both prove singularly ill-equipped to cope alone; less predictably, and rather charmingly, they could also prove to be each other's salvation.

Gabriel Tate, Time Out, 2nd December 2012

So much derision flows between Croydon-based flat mates Jez (Robert Webb) and Mark (David Mitchell), it's easy to forget that underneath it they need one another in a terrible, attraction-of-opposites kind of way. They're forever in a sort of losers' arm-wrestling match, competing to belittle each other into oblivion, then occasionally one will save the other from disaster. It's almost heart-warming, or as near as this marvellously bitter series gets.

Tonight, the pair are both on new career paths: Mark's book Business Secrets of the Pharaohs has found a publisher, while Jez is learning to be a life coach (a whole week's intensive training).

Naturally, Mark is scathing about Jez's new calling: "I suppose it's better than some of your job ideas, like becoming an admiral," he sneers, but by the end he may just have softened.

David Butcher, Radio Times, 2nd December 2012

Fresh Meat is from the people who brought us Peep Show which, just to make Secret State jealous, is back for an eighth series. Student behaviour, albeit from two men who should know better? One of whom is a rail museum? If Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong only have one joke, it's a very good one.

Aidan Smith, Scotland on Sunday, 2nd December 2012

The existence of Kookyville may have just been a ploy to flatter the preceding Peep Show: a bona fide comedy returning, remarkably, for an eighth series. And though this tale of two emotionally stunted flatmates isn't quite as snortworthy as it once was, it's gained a kind of pathos in its middle age, bound up with its lead duo's near-pathological inability to change. A state of affairs encapsulated beautifully in this week's opener when David Mitchell's anal Mark reacted to the death of love rival Gerard. "Life, spinning past, every second, every single fleeting moment until we're gone," he mused. "I'm taking a look at my phone tariff."

Hugh Montgomery, The Independent on Sunday, 2nd December 2012

Part of the enduring appeal of Peep Show (Sunday, Channel 4) is that you want to believe that Mark and Jez are exaggerated versions of David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the comedy partners who play them. Actually it is written not by them but by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (though Mitchell and Webb do provide some "additional material").

Whether or not they are like their characters perhaps doesn't matter. What is important is that those characters don't have anything in common apart from their shared flat. Mark is pessimistic, conservative and neurotic; Jez is feckless, uninhibited and shallow.

After almost 10 years, and eight series, Peep Show still feels quite subversive and edgy. The stylistic device the show pioneered - of using point-of-view shots with the thoughts of the characters audible as voice-overs - still seems fresh and it is surprising that this has been so little imitated. (There's Miranda, and that's about it.) There was a wonderfully timed moment in the first episode when Mark and Jez were having a back and forth argument which Mark ended in his head, having the last word.

To bring their story up to date: Mark is now a father, though he is not with Soph (Olivia Colman), the mother. He is trying to gets Dobby (Isy Suttie) to move in with him and get rid of Jez in the process. Jez is still unemployed and has been persuaded to see a therapist, whom Mark pays for. The humour is as black as ever, with Mark being annoyed with a rival suitor for winning sympathy by dying. My favourite line from episode one: "A squirt of Lynx: the busy man's shower."

Peep Show still feels relevant, capturing well one aspect of the aspiring but doomed middle classes. Though they are in some ways a conventional flat-sharing "odd couple", they both need each other because they like to think there is someone who is even more of a loser than they are. In many ways Jeremy is a child - a hedonistic and casually cruel one. Mark is easier to identify with. Most of us are more connected to our inner Mark than our inner Jeremy, though we would like it to be the other way around.

Nigel Farndale, The Daily Telegraph, 2nd December 2012

Video: Peep Show episode 8.2 preview

Watch a clip of this Sunday's episode of the sitcom, in which Jeremy takes his therapist out on a date.

Written by Tom Cole. The Radio Times, 29th November 2012

Peep Show's amusing start to series eight

As always, the genius of Peep Show is the format itself where we see everything through either Mark or Jeremy's eyes and get to hear their private thoughts. No other show can even copy it without there being legal implications, one assumes, so it's pretty unique in the comedy world.

Written by Dan Owen. MSN TV, 26th November 2012