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Peep Show
Series 4, Episode 2
- 20 April 2007, Channel 4, 10.30pm
Starring: David Mitchell, Robert Webb & Olivia Coleman
Flaws are beginning to peep through the plot of this long running comedy
Mark’s obsession with his boss, Johnson, is even odder than usual in the second episode of the new Peep Show series. Johnson has become a caricature of himself – his “jive” management-speak used to be hilarious, but now it’s just creepy. “Do what you have to. Fuck each other. I mean it. Watch some chickens fucking a horse.” Excuse me?
Successful comedy shows often end up tying themselves in knots by entering the realm of self-parody, and the development of Johnson into a foul-mouthed, barely comprehensible monster certainly feels a little unnatural. But happily, Mark and Jeremy’s interior dialogues are still spot on. A highlight of this episode is Mark’s thoughts as he tries to enjoy a lap dance: “Oh great, now I’m getting an erection. How utterly predictable.” And Jeremy’s ability to delude himself into performing unspeakably immoral acts still provides a telling vision of the modern male.
But the problems inherent in a fourth series of a successful show are starting to rear their heads. There’s little direction left in the plot now that we know these characters so well. In this episode, Mark feverishly prepares a speech to the company board and royally screws it up. But the Mark-and-Sophie strand isn’t developed, and Jeremy is doing and saying the same sort of things that he was in the first series. Peep Show is still funny and painfully insightful, but the story is beginning to tire.
William Brett
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