With this in mind, you’ll understand why the weekend’s Peep Show held more intrigue to me than most, as this was exactly the predicament Mark and Jez found themselves in. Like a very British farce, the pair were in Zahra’s flat as Jez finally wooed her into his naughty ways of thinking, and Mark went over to pick him up to attend his son’s (James Ian or Ian James?) christening. And then the farce began. That’s not to say that there weren’t any high points. Mark’s admission that he had nothing else in the ‘dad bank’ than punctuality raised a laugh, as did the general notion that Jez is surely the single worst person to be locked in a hallway with, berating Mark (‘Mr Patheto Hand’) and bemoaning everything about their predicament without actually doing anything about it, other than ordering pizza, of course. In the main, though, the show descended into the worst kind of comedy: farce. A very crude farce at that, and while I have no problem at all with the depths to which Peep Show plumbs, there has to be a great joke behind the crudeness for it to work. Eating a charred dog to save face, for example, is a genius example of when the show gets the balance bang on. Listening to a man on the toilet while hiding behind a shower curtain, on the other hand, is woefully obvious farcical comedy and, importantly, not that funny. I don’t doubt that the series will return to form come Christmas Eve, which can’t come round soon enough. Not enjoying an episode of Peep Show is a strangely disconcerting experience. Read our review of the third episode here. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.
