Don't Be Surprised By Failure
Peep Show is widely agreed by critics to be one of the highest quality programmes of recent years. It has attracted industry awards, and outspoken praise from Ricky Gervais. Yet the audiences are staying away, with ratings for all four series languishing below 1.5 million. Is it time for TV commissioners with an eye on their budgets to throw in the towel and commission wall-to-wall reality cookery programmes? We asked a couple of unbiased cultural commentators: Peep Show creators and writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.
(Oh, and we also asked what you really want to know: what happens in series five, are Mark and Jez based on David and Rob, and which bits of Peep Show are based on real incidents?)
"Don't be surprised by failure." I've just asked Peep Show co-creator and writer Jesse Armstrong for inspirational tips for would-be writers, and his advice would also make an effective tag-line for his show, with its constant depiction of thwarted dreams and humiliation. Perhaps the programme's other writer and co-creator, Sam Bain, has some more upbeat advice on what makes a good writer? He ponders. "Unemployablity is a great asset for aspiring writers. I'm completely unemployable." I'm beginning to understand that the show's relentlessly sardonic world-view isn't a mere front.
If you're not familiar with the programme - and shame on you if not - it's really no exaggeration to suggest Peep Show is one of the finest British sitcoms ever to air. The pitch, content-wise, is simple: we follow the everyday life of twenty-something flatmates and "very ordinary weirdoes" Mark and Jeremy, an odd couple as worthy of iconic odd couple status as Laurel and Hardy, Lemon and Matthau, Bert and Ernie, or - dare I say it? - PC and Mac.
Just as those inexplicably controversial Mac ads would later do, Sam and Jesse made use of certain natural characteristics in comic duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb when creating Mark and Jez. "We knew David and Rob's relationship would be a good thing to play with. We tapped into a version of their characters; we were familiar with their comic tone, so it was always written with them in mind," Jesse explains.
