Hurrah for the return of the Bafta award-winning comedy about two socially inept flatmates. After last week's typically witty first episode in which Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) tried to avoid facing up to the fact that one of them is to become a father, Sophie (Olivia Coleman) finally reveals whose baby she's carrying. But both boys are more interested in pursuing their respective love interests: Mark makes a final play for IT worker Dobby (Isy Suttie) and Jeremy takes a shine to an arty Russian émigré.

Socially inept Mark (David Mitchell) once used the Siege of Stalingrad as a template for seduction, so it's hardly surprising he's so hopeless with the ladies. He hasn't learnt his lesson; tonight, when the object of his adoration - shy former workmate Dobby - turns up for a date, he resorts to a plan of attack as he goes in for a kiss: "Time for me to roll in my militarised divisions! We're Roosevelt and Stalin!" It's excruciating and hilarious, as are his housemate Jeremy's (Robert Webb) equally clumsy attempts to romance an attractive Russian woman who lives in the same block of flats. But Mark and Jeremy are at their comical best when they are at their most craven and pathetic. So sit back and get ready to hold your jaw as it drops into your lap when the unfortunate Sophie finally reveals which one of them is the father of her baby.

You'd think that Sophie revealing the father of her baby would make for a spectacular enough denouement but this goes one step beyond, thanks to a tissue of baby-related lies Jez has told to the latest apple of his eye and the fact that a malfunctioning boiler is causing Mark to hit, um, boiling point. Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's script is on particularly good form tonight, with Jez's poem F*** You Bush a corkingly stupid highlight.

[z]Channel 4[z], Friday night, around 9.50pm: Derren Brown attempts to stick viewers to their sofas. Channel 4, Friday night, 10pm: Peep Show begins with Jez and Mark getting rid of their old sofa. Mark to Jez: "I suppose you never really sat on that sofa much did you/ Maybe just for about 100,000 hours..." Serendipitous scheduling? Canny planning by Objective Productions? Or do Derren's powers go further than we thought...?

Peep Show returned on Friday - with Jeremy reluctantly taking up a job at JLB International, only to be made redundant - along with everyone else in the business - before it's even time for mid-morning coffee. This was a great disappointment for Mark, who had been hoping to exploit his newly acquired managerial power ("Maybe I could make him wear a little coloured hat like a chimpanzee," he'd mused, as they set off for work). He was also dismayed that Jeremy seemed to feel that a one-and-a-half-hour service record qualified him to be as stunned by dismissal as someone who'd been working his way through the cubicle farm for five long years. "You're freeloading on my trauma! You're a grief thief!" he complained, when Jeremy murmured something collegiate about the shock. It all ended badly after Mark had rallied his employees in rebellion against head office, for the sole purpose of getting Dobby into bed. It all ended badly, that is, in a very good way.

Hooray for the return of Peep Show on Friday night, in which Mark lost his job, got bribed by his ex-bosses to abandon his compensation campaign and yet still found himself among the rioters wrecking their premises. Jeremy is beginning to look mature by comparison. Neither, however, wishes to contemplate the horrible truth that one of them is the father of Sophie's forthcoming baby. As Mark says, it's too big. "You can't look at it. It's like the Sun." Well done Peep Show. Each season you find new ways to make me ashamed to be a man.

Sam Bain 'fears Peep Show decline'

One of the writers of Peep Show has admitted that he fears the show could eventually go downhill.

Brown and Peep Show bump C4's ratings

C4 had a bumper ratings night on Friday, with Derren Brown's second experiment peaking with 3.4m viewers, and the return of Peep Show scoring record ratings.

Peep Show series 6 episode 1 review

Peep Show is back and as strong as ever. Eat my foam, baby!

The BAFTA-winning comedy Peep Show returned for its sixth series on Friday, with little sense that the quality is slipping. For a British sitcom, this is itself cause for celebration, as most begin to lose their mojo after three years, but the format behind Peep Show (it's all told from the physical perspective of loser flatmates Mark and Jez, a voice-over supplying their innermost thoughts) lends itself to a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tragi-comic misadventures.



There truly is nothing funnier or more relatable than seeing the world through someone else's eyes, if only because it comes as blessed relief you're not alone. This new series finds best-friends Jez and Mark finally "growing up", but only in the sense they're both acting like prospective fathers to Sophie's baby -- one biologically, the other spiritually. After the comparative disappointment of series 5 (which never really capitalized on the aftermath of series 4's wedding disaster), it's great to see the show has found a compelling narrative again.