Peep Show

Have you been watching... Peep Show?

It might look like the nation's favourite losers are finally on a winning streak, but their refusal to change is endlessly amusing.

Peep Show 7.3 review

This third episode was entertaining and well-written, as usual, but didn't offer much unique to comment on.

Peep Show series 7 episode 3 review

New character, Kenneth, provides one of many belly laughs in one of Peep Show's finest episodes...

Things seem to be going pretty well for Mark this week - his relationship with Dobby is back on, and Soph is away, leaving him for the time being without parental responsibilities. Happily, his crippling sexual anxiety is there to fuel much of the comedy in this episode. Having invested in a sexual appliance and named it ("Kenneth"), he now wonders how to introduce it into the relationship. Jeremy is still faking an interest in culture to impress Zahra, but the big news tonight is that Super Hans has decided to give up drugs. "Even crack?" asks Jez. "But it's your favourite!"

Mark and dim Dobby are now an item, though Mark (David Mitchell) is sexually insecure. He's lost his "dirty mojo", according to best mate Jez, whom he unwisely consults for sex tips. Mark also finds a new friend called Kenneth, but the less you know about that, the better. Jez (Robert Webb) has romantic difficulties of his own as he fakes interest in foreign films, the theatre, contemporary dance, magic realism and historical novels to worm his way into his beloved Zahra's heart. He's such an idiot it's almost adorable to hear him trying to get to grips with reading all 372 pages of Wuthering Heights: "I've been on the same four pages for three hours." But possibly even more delicious are Super Hans's (the brilliant Matt King) maniacal displacement activities after he gives up crack. "Cycling, running, cooking, knitting, quilting..." And there's an emergency when he accidentally runs all the way to Windsor.

"I'm knitting like an electric nan!" declares Super Hans tonight. Our favourite saucer-eyed waster is off the crack cocaine and this week he's taken up all kinds of other unlikely hobbies to burn up his new-found energy.

It's an absolutely first class episode that sees everyone out of their comfort zones. Mark is desperate to find ways to keep his new girlfriend Dobby interested in bed and Jeremy is doing his best to keep up with culture-vulture Zahra who likes art and French movies and modern dance and is under the mistaken impression that Jez does too.

Jez, bless him, has evolved only to the point where his prime consideration is making his own life as comfortable as possible with the minimum of effort.

Reading books doesn't really fit into that category so watching him grapple with Wuthering Heights must be one of the few times that Emily Bronte's novel has been the cue for eye-watering laughter.

The writing and performances remain brilliant, the stupidity of Jez agonising, the agony of Mark exquisite. This week, Jeremy joined a band as a sax player ("I can't play the sax but it's basically like a giant kazoo") and got a job with the man who was in a coma last week and whose girlfriend he is planning to steal ("I'll juggle them until it all blows up in my stupid face"), while Mark divided his time between looking after his baby son, pursuing - and at last, it seems, landing - Dobby and playing Cybermen vs Roosevelt with Gerard after a weak moment in a model shop. Jeremy finds them role-playing and mocks. But how is what they're doing any different from Jez's Xboxing, Mark argues. "I'm sorry that, in an infantilised world, I have ended up with the uncool toys." Oh Mark. It is your constant drive to iron out the inconsistencies in this frustrating adventure we call life that makes us love you. Please let it be so with Dobby too, forevermore.

Peep Show 7.2 review

Plenty of amusing moments this week, too, such as Jez using Sophie's breast milk to make cups of tea.

The news that Dobby has got a new boyfriend sees Mark, busy with babysitting duties, sign a Yalta-like pact with his bete noire Gerard as they try to split the two. Meanwhile, Jez gets a job on Zahra's no-longer-comatose boyfriend's website - "This is brilliant, I can do the job, have an affair. Juggle them both till it all blows up in my stupid face." Keep an eye out for Super Hans's new band - Man Feelings - for whom Jeremy is desperate to land a gig as bongo player or "a shit-hot bongista".