Peep Show (now with added Mitchell & Webb Look)

I recall some ridiculous "I bet they're fucking tories" talk upthread.

they'd both probably consider themselves sensible centrists; RW a confirmed blue labour blairite sort & I'd guess DM an old school liberal by inclination, but ofc in ilx discourse both of these = tory

"but ofc in ilx discourse both of these = tory"

I'd probably stop clicking on ILX if it didn't have any posters that didn't hate on these odious, unfunny smug-cunts. Yours, a barrel of laughter and self-confessed "comedy lover" and lover of laughing etc...

dm in real life is like mark corrigan minus the charisma

his recent memoir was featured on R4 last week, it sounded like some real trite and dull shit. And this wasn't coloured by my complete dislike of these 2. It was awful writing, honestly!

Whose memoir? I'm sure they've both written memoirs and, if not, will probably have dashed one off for the Christmas market by the end of this month. I suppose reading about their terrible struggles to make any sort of living from performing, acting, writing, journalism, appearing on panel shows etc might be insightful to some any person looking to follow them into the terribly tough dog-eat-dog world of the British media.

It was DM's, and he is dealing with his masculinity issues + his tough upbringing on the mean streets of Lincolnshire. It is very "edgy", well maybe shit is the right word!

You mean RW not DM. Sorry just saw an article about RW and masculinity being retweeted a lot recently.

er.. that'll be the one.

He is a terrible writer, so any plaudits he is getting for tackling "serious issues" in that book are seriously misguided imo.

Again with the "odious"

Thanking u all for coming into a thread dedicated to something you don't like and letting us all know that you don't like it. This is some hot content.

Actually I think the thread is primarily dedicated to something people do like

Yes, I do like Peep Show, I even quite liked That Mitchell and Webb Look, but these two, especially Mitchell, are only what's bleedin' wrong with this bleedin' country.

yeah I think Peep Show is incredible. I don't have much feeling about Webb but Mitchell is a fucking annoying bore.

I definitely find the "tellin' it like it is" rants annoying* but I've found enough of his soapbox videos interesting and funny. Totally disagreed with a few but I don't think they're all to be taken seriously.
Occasionally you find out something that seems uncharacteristic: he thinks people should fart in public without embarrassment and necrophilia doesn't really bother him.

*buy I hate anyone taking that tone regardless of what they're saying. Most people who've been given a weekly platform to rant are going to get on your nerves.

I liked Peep Show but it's depressing as fuck - comedy torture porn, almost.

I'll happily watch it in five-minute YouTube chunks, but I can't handle it as a binge show. The nihilism gets tedious.

To each their own, of course.

But it's interesting that M&W have such a cosy reputation based on this unredemptive and brutally sad show.

As their individual, mediocre BBC-panel-show dickishness, it's not my thing, but they don't really seem worth the energy of hate.

depends on whether you subscribe to a donaldonian view of finite hate energy or whether you find the occasional two minute hate energising

I come away from peep show feeling both indicted and better off--a bit like rubbing the knots out of your back, like I know I'm not as bad as these guys but I think everyone shares some traits w them, esp in the deception of self and others ... there's something so cleansing abt watching peep show, it's like seeing ppl for what they really are for half an hr

I don't know much about them beyond that except that the "are we the baddies?" Nazi skit is a classic and david mitchell's rant on bread on that quiz show made me laugh

Lads

I miss Super Hans.

I recall DM's op-eds being depressingly shit but PS is classic for sure, though it probably went on a series or two too long

overall peep show is uneven but ultra classic. I think david mitchell is watchable and can be funny in a one-note ranty way but there is something offputtingly complacent and defensive about him

dm in real life is like mark corrigan minus the charisma

this is kind of true, I think the writers saw him more clearly than he sees himself so there is strangely more awareness and fragility about mark than DM. equally I think RW doesn't get jez and as the show progressed and their antics got more outlandishly awful the lack of sympathy they both had for their characters made it more of a struggle imo

the idea of Jez being a centrist pundit is hysterical to me

Only met DM once but he was thoroughly likeable

ogmor that sounds extremely plausible re both of them xps

actually my other half worked with them and has only nice things to say about them. but yknow they're Oxbridge so obv the root of all evil.

xp Ogmor I'd agree re Jez. Mark and the vanity publishing didn't ring true either. Other than that I thought they'd drawn quite a clever line wrt his self-awareness/total cluelessness

this show is weak. should be happy it exists but it's meh at best so far

Love Mitchell's crazy laugh in the rare times you hear it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxjXAb9LQlc

Something I'd nearly forgotten from the first times I'd watched Peepshow was how astonished and distracted I was by Mitchell's eyes, how big and black they were. Like Bad Cooper but bigger.

this show is weak. should be happy it exists but it's meh at best so far

Objectively wrong

not sure if it's been mentioned but RW's book is the number 1 selling non fiction hardback book in the Uk.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJWN7jgX0AAoxRp.jpg

well, look at the fucking state of that lot. You can only read a finite amount of books in a lifetime, folks. Choose wisely!

Circa - yeah I was wrong. This has grown on me

I generally have an instant annoyance of animal-related storylines in sitcoms. (Same with Mummy the dog in Peep Show). So I'd rather it did without that, or maybe I'm just dead inside.

I loved the Mummy plot.

https://i.imgur.com/6ECdo6p.png

"back" is pretty enjoyable so far

that was the last one, wasn't it? (the cancer test one).

This is pretty brutal https://t.co/e0SFKXAQol pic.twitter.com/2whBIrMgZG

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) March 7, 2022

I wonder how much of this is just bluster and how much reflects how people would actually act in that situation, it reminded me the Peep Show episode where Mark and Jez talk about whether they would have joined the resistance had they been in nazi-occupied France

Mark: I dunno, Jeremy. It would have been a terribly difficult time, but I would probably have kept my head down.
Jeremy: You're kidding! I totally would have joined up.
Mark: That's very easy to say, Jeremy, but you would have risked death not just for yourself but for your family.
Jeremy: I'd probably have just got on a train to Berlin and taken Hitler down. Boof, the whole thing's over.
Mark: Well, I guess we'll never know for sure.
Jeremy: Oh, I know. I definitely know. No question about it.
Mark: Well, congratulations. You would have been a brave, brave man.
Jeremy: I can't believe you wouldn't be in the Resistance with me. I'm really disappointed in you.

obviously Jeremy is not any braver than Mark, he's just has a more conceited, less realistic self-image - but maybe the person with the deluded self-image is more likely to actually do the heroic thing when the moment comes because they've rhetorically backed themselves into a corner, whereas the self-critical person is more likely to not do the heroic thing because they're already prepared to do that, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy? Being constantly self-critical can make you a bad person because you have a ready made explanation/excuse whenever you do bad things?

(I guess the difference is that joining the resistance would have been unarguably the morally right thing to do, but whether staying to fight for the US would be the right thing to do is more ambiguous?)

jeremy would, of course, have run like hell and/or become an informer

relaxing video of los dude bros coming to life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnshhIWdEfk

It's so weird, my first reaction was, huh, Peep Show is still on? Then my second reaction was to look up when it stopped airing. Then my third reaction was to try and determine if we've seen every season, and ... I don't know! It's been so long I can't remember if we ever finished it, but reading the episode descriptions is no help at all. Maybe we did? Maybe we didn't? Were there really *9* seasons? No idea! I could have sworn we stopped at 5, which for some reason I thought was the end, but scanning the summaries I think we went past there, but no idea how far. Might have to start over. Or maybe just pretend we finished and thought it was all very funny.

I feel like the 'Mark and Jez eat a dog' season is where a lot of people understandably jumped off the train but it's worth hopping back on because it did quickly and admirably redeem that epic misstep imo.

It's solidly funny all the way to the end imo

There’s a lot of great episodes from the later seasons, like when Mark finally publishes Business Secrets of the Pharaohs—a rare example where Jez is the (relatively) sane one and Mark is unhinged. Or "Chairman Mark", which has a great election speech from Mark as he tries to become chairman of the freehold committee (tho as an American, I’m not really sure what that means… like being on a condo board, maybe?)

It's a shame people remember the dog eating episode mainly for the dog eating, this scene from the same episode has one of the series greatest ever lines

"Unfilled?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkjeorS12F0

good timing, I decided to watch Back this week. it starts off really badly imo. was really jarring to see them basically playing the same characters in what starts off as quite a lame trad sitcom with trad sitcom jokes. it gets better after about 3 episodes, but apparently because it got cancelled they never resolve anything, but am going to finish it anyway

re Peep Show, I did have the impression it started sucking after about series 5 but I rewatched it last week before watching Back and it's actually still quite funny most of the time and some of the episodes I don't like are in the early seasons - I think my least favourite one is the one in the gym where they accuse that guy of shitting in the pool and touching up Mark.

I looked up the guy that wrote Back when I was hating it and he also wrote the Peep Show episode where Mark gets raped which was another low point.

What I did notice was both Peep Show and Back have the same bullshit nonsense about tracking people's IP addresses which just isn't how this works but strangely the Back guy didn't write that episode.