Peep Show (now with added Mitchell & Webb Look)

NOT REALLY OF COURSE. what a smashing ep.

"i'm a man!"

how do i know?

i got tickets.

No prizes for Peep Show? You're having a laugh

Last week's British Comedy Awards brought little cheer for Channel 4. But the underrated sitcom and the return of an old hit have kept a smile on the face of the network's comedy boss

Stephen Armstrong
Monday December 19, 2005
The Guardian

Although awards ceremonies are usually fairly shambolic, there was a curious moment at last week's British Comedy Awards when slick, sardonic Ricky Gervais briefly lost it. Handing out the gong for best light entertainment programme, he took a break from exchanging banter with Jonathan Ross to berate the British public and the assembled industry for failing to vote for Peep Show. "It's the best show on television today," he exclaimed, adding that it was a "debacle" that the show did not grab a gong.
Sitting at the Channel 4 table, the station's head of comedy Caroline Leddy permitted herself a quiet smile. Earlier that week she had talked in her office about the show's improving ratings: "Peep Show is just building now. Finally. Bastards. I can't come up with a theory as to why the most beautifully written sitcom in history isn't being watched by the entire nation." And yet it was almost the only cheer on an otherwise slim night for C4. There is no doubt that the BBC has had the run of things in comedy over the past few years - Little Britain and Catherine Tate were the breakthrough shows of 2005 and, while hopes are high for next month's My Name Is Earl, C4 has yet to find a replacement for its imported schedule stalwart Friends.

Waving chequebooks

At the same time Five and ITV are entering the fray, waving chequebooks and desperate to spot the kind of talent that would have been a shoo-in for Leddy just 10 years ago. David Walliams from Little Britain, for instance, first appeared on telly on C4 as part of Annie Griffin's debut Coming Soon, alongside Julia Davis and Paul Kaye. Ex-C4 regular Harry Hill is the centre of ITV's comedy line up and even Ricky Gervais first stumbled on to our screens as part of its late-90s topical sketch offering The 11 O'clock Show. Every channel has decided it needs comedy, and most of them are encroaching on C4's turf.

Leddy is aware of the pressure - "Everybody now has a card with 'I'm a great big comedy producer with shitloads of money - why don't you come to me?'," she says. "At some point, however, I think you have to sit back, not panic, maintain the very good relationships you've got with top talent, not lose sight of the old as well as the new, and have great people working around you."

That she has the talent is clear - Peter Kay, Chris Morris, Graham Linehan and Annie Griffin all put their shows through the channel, and The 11 O'clock Show is still providing the likes of Jimmy Carr and the writers of Spoons. The question is, in a fast- moving television environment, shouldn't the channel be grabbing younger stars earlier and tying them into longer term, US-style output deals?

No, says Leddy. "We don't do exclusivity deals and long-term options because you spend the rest of the year going through all the clauses working out how they can do a Radio 4 series," she says. "You just have to show that you have open arms and are ready for whatever else they want to do with us next."

Will that not have to change in an increasingly competitive future? The comedy industry is not renowned for its loyalty. She remains noncommittal. "It's an ever-changing story. Things will be drastically different in 10 years' time - in two years' time even. As a principle, backing the talent, being loyal through thick and thin and busting a gut to make the product good, is still the best we can do and it's fundamentally what my job is. If you pounce on somebody and give them too much editorial responsibility too early, it can sink them, but you'd hope that with sensible piloting that doesn't happen too often."

Coming up in 2006 are a second series of Green Wing, a new Graham Linehan project, The IT Crowd, a couple of sketch shows for E4, which will find their way on to the main channel, and a new show from the Garth Marenghi team. "Let's get three million people to adore you rather than every 17-year-old in a black T-shirt," is the way she sells working for C4 to comedy talent.

There are 12 further projects in development and a similar number at script stage. She is also revisiting the C4's first comedy triumph, The Comic Strip Presents ... with a Christmas special reuniting the cast and adding the likes of Rebecca Front and Doon Mackichan. "Peter Richardson called me up and said 'what do you reckon?' and I thought - 'I can't really think of a good reason not to do this because it'll be wonderful'."

She chooses these shows, she says, because she has a natural inclination towards authored pieces, but admits that it carries with it a certain risk. "I think - I'm loath to say it but I always end up saying it and then regretting it - I think bad comedy is a lot harder to watch than bad drama or bad factual. If somebody purports to be funny and you think they're absolutely not, the very least you can do is turn it off, and the worst you can do is never come near that channel again. Poor me, eh?"

Her faith in authored work means she intends to stick firmly with Chris Morris and has no regrets about commissioning Nathan Barley - a show that excited more column inches than almost any other in 2005, but that saw ratings tail off significantly. "I think Nathan Barley is an exquisite piece of work," she says, and you can feel she would like to be banging the table at this point. "I think the craftsmanship and mastery that's gone into that may have been slightly under-appreciated but I'm incredibly pleased that we did it."

This sort of loyalty marks out her career. Born and raised in Sheffield, she studied law at Bristol where Morris was a fellow student, then did a postgrad in legal history at Cambridge where she got the comedy bug. She failed an audition for Footlights so co-founded a radical women's theatre troupe called The Millies - "we thought we were dead hard and we so weren't. But we were quite funny."

Industry buddy

After the group fell apart she tried her hand at acting in late-80s kids' telly, such as The Satellite Show, which was produced by Victoria Pile - who later went on to create Smack The Pony and Green Wing for Leddy at C4. A BBC traineeship got her into radio, and from there she went to Talkback to work on Brass Eye with Morris, before arriving at C4 as commissioning editor, entertainment in 1997.

Since then she has stuck by Pile and Morris. Pile praises Leddy's involvement: "She will sit in on workshops and rehearsals whenever she can, and provides regular and valid feedback in the cutting room. Unusually she has true understanding of the real issues that challenge a production such as Green Wing - cast availability, scheduling logistics, unconventional writing methods - and goes out of her way to smooth the path. I tend to get a bit bleak during tricky phases of a show, frequently losing confidence in my goals. Caroline is a tremendous 'morale fluffer'."

Pile is a rare industry buddy for a woman who shies away from the likes of the Perrier panel: "I am slightly reluctant to engage in the fray that is the comedy world," she says. "I'd like to think I keep a rather grown-up distance from that. I hope, as a result, I don't miss out on opportunities, but it's a battle. You have your instinct and your judgment and that's all you've got." And then the Sheffield girl in her speaks out: "So yes, it's hard, but it's not like working down a bloody coal mine, is it?"

http://www.petitiononline.com/peepshow/petition.html

"Mitchell, 32, first met Webb, 33, when they were at Cambridge University, studying History and English, respectively. Mitchell, whose parents lived in Oxford, didn't find his new surroundings particularly remarkable."

this has taken my unfortunate identification up a notch.

So is series 3 (of Peep Show) still due out on DVD in October? Barely an month woo!

Boo to dig at "A Bit of" Fry and Laurie

but which school did you go to?