DVD With his disastrous marriage to Sophie already falling apart and Jeremy finally running out of money, Mark and Jez return for another series of spectacularly bad decisions.
Details
Series Four ended with Mark and Sophie's disastrous wedding and the almost immediate collapse of their relationship. When the pair finally return to work after their non-honeymoon, Mark discovers that the embarrassment is far from over. Sophie has considerably more friends in the office and, wherever Mark goes, he's greeted by evil looks and the sound of disapproving tutting. Unlike Sophie, he can't simply turn on the tears and things are rapidly becoming uncomfortable. However, after Sophie smashes his coffee mug, Mark finally finds someone on his side and Johnson instructs her to take some time off.
With Sophie temporarily out of the way, Mark decides it's time to start afresh and resume his seemingly endless quest for "the one". His radar soon homes in on Dobby, the new girl in the IT department whose geeky hobbies and interests seem remarkably compatible with his own. As usual, Mark dithers, over-analyses everything and continually risks talking himself out of doing anything, but eventually manages to ask her out.
Their night at the wonderfully named F*ck Bunker, where Jeremy and Super Hans are attempting to perform, initially seems to be going rather well. Unfortunately, this is Mark we're talking about and disaster is never far away. When they discover a dishevelled and vomiting Sophie in the toilets, she drops a fairly substantial bombshell on Dobby by revealing that she is, technically at least, still Mark's wife.
Meanwhile, Jeremy's apparently never-ending supply of money has finally dried up. Having spent years living off the money supplied by his mother - without contributing much towards running Mark's flat - he stubbornly refuses to find a proper job and continues to cling to the increasingly forlorn hope that his musical career will eventually take off. Even the death of his great-aunt fails to provide the expected inheritance when his mother decides to keep the money and spend it on herself.
Unfortunately, yet another Jeremy family argument also manages to torpedo Mark's latest ambition: writing the military biography of his mother's boyfriend. Things aren't going particularly well at home either and, thoroughly sick of Jeremy, Mark attempts to replace him with Saz, an Australian woman he meets whilst speed dating. Naturally, Saz turns out to be a rowdy freeloader who has little genuine interest in Mark beyond the opportunity for somewhere free to live.
Out on his ear, Jeremy asks Big Suze if he can stay with her and, whilst at her house, steals Johnson's credit card and promptly goes on a shopping spree. Unfortunately - there's that word again - Jeremy isn't exactly the cleverest of fraudsters and Johnson catches him red-handed, leaving Mark to pick up the financial pieces once more. With a promotion, a sacking, a religious cult and an unexpected pregnancy still to come, it's just another few weeks in the weird lives of Mark and Jeremy.
Picture & Sound
No doubt still filmed on a rather tight budget and with an array of handheld digital video cameras super-glued to their heads - well, okay, probably not - the picture quality isn't really anything special. Nevertheless, I'm not complaining too much as it remains consistent with the previous series and it's hardly competing with some mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Although, horrors of horrors, there are apparently advanced plans for an American version of the series.
Given that much of the camerawork uses the show's tight-angled and unique point-of-view filming technique, the limitations are hardly surprising. Detail is adequate and there are no significant problems with outlining or pixelisation, but the image can still look rather flat and washed out at times. It's functional rather than impressive, but then nobody is going to buy Peep Show as a demonstration disc for their new television.
As with the previous DVD outings, and given the continuing bandwidth limitations of terrestrial television broadcasts, there's very little to expect from the sound department. Still, the 256Kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is more than sufficient for its needs, with the all-important dialogue remaining crisp and clear whilst the musical score remains as catchy as ever. Overall, it's nothing special, but that's exactly what you'd expect from a television series such as this.
Menu & Extras
The menu system is carried over from the previous DVD releases, with scored and animated menus at each level accompanied by various clips playing in the background. However, unlike the previous releases, there are no audio commentaries. I guess the boys are a little busier these days, but that's still no excuse not to give the fans something extra - especially since the commentaries tended to be amongst the highlights of the earlier DVDs.
Fortunately, there's still some worthwhile material on offer, with the rather amusing Relationship Tree being the best of the bunch. Running for thirteen minutes, Sophie is on hand to narrate and reveal some worrying trends in Mark and Jeremy's relationships. Looking back over five series produces some startling revelations that I'm sure both of them - and several of the unfortunate people they've encountered - would probably prefer us to forget.
Next is the ten-minute Sophie's Peep Show, which gives us the opportunity to see Series Five through Sophie's eyes, complete with her own internal monologue. It's a clever twist on the programme's familiar format and reveals that Sophie's private thoughts aren't necessarily any healthier than those of Mark and Jeremy. Who would have thought it?
In the ten-minute Behind the Scenes featurette, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong discuss the series and explain how they go about writing the show. With plenty of clips, plus some good behind-the-scenes footage of the cast going through a script read-through and rehearsal, it's an interesting look at how the programme is put together.
Unfortunately, things go a little downhill with the rather pointless Deleted Scenes. For a series as good as this, you'd have thought they could have found rather more than the paltry two scenes on offer here. Running for a mere two minutes in total, there's an extended scene in which Mark helps Sophie out of the F*ck Bunker and another where a rather hungry Jeremy returns to the sperm clinic to reclaim a half-eaten sandwich. Hardly essential viewing.
Overall
Fans of the series may be a little disappointed with the extras, particularly the disappearance of the audio commentaries, but fortunately the comedy content more than makes up for it. After feeling that Series Three had suffered something of a dip, Series Four put Peep Show firmly back on track and Series Five continues that return to form with another collection of wonderfully uncomfortable disasters.
The biggest change is that Mark has finally escaped from the relationship he's spent years pursuing. Well, almost. After the spectacular disaster of his wedding to Sophie, he suddenly has the opportunity to start again and find "the one". Naturally, rather than learning anything from the experience, he immediately begins repeating many of the same mistakes with somebody new.
The introduction of Dobby is one of the best things about the series. Unlike Sophie, she actually seems remarkably well suited to Mark. She's awkward, geeky and shares enough of his interests that you can genuinely imagine the two of them getting along. Unfortunately, Mark's greatest obstacle remains Mark himself. Even when presented with someone who appears to like him for precisely the person he is, he still manages to overthink everything and turn relatively simple situations into catastrophes.
David Mitchell remains superb at making Mark's endless internal calculations hilarious. Every social interaction becomes a tactical operation in which he analyses what somebody has said, considers what he ought to say in response and then somehow selects precisely the wrong option. The difference now is that Mark seems slightly more aware of just how badly his life has gone wrong - although this increased self-awareness doesn't appear to make him any better at fixing it.
Jeremy, meanwhile, finally has to face something he's successfully avoided for years: the possibility that somebody might actually expect him to support himself. Watching his money disappear should theoretically encourage him to grow up, find a job and take some responsibility for his life. Naturally, he does virtually anything except that. Stealing Johnson's credit card is a particularly spectacular demonstration that, whenever Jeremy is presented with a sensible and an incredibly stupid solution to a problem, the sensible one barely gets a look in.
There's also a wonderfully strong supporting cast. Super Hans remains gloriously unpredictable, Johnson continues to inhabit a completely different universe of self-confidence to Mark and Sophie is becoming increasingly dysfunctional in her own right. Isy Suttie's Dobby fits into this collection of damaged individuals perfectly and immediately feels as though she's always belonged in the Peep Show world.
One of the reasons the programme continues to work so well is that the characters are actually allowed to move forward, even if Mark and Jeremy themselves seem determined not to. Relationships change, jobs come and go and actions have consequences that continue into later episodes. Yet however much their circumstances change, the pair retain an extraordinary ability to sabotage every opportunity that comes their way.
With a series that continues to develop and find even more possibilities for its characters, it's hardly surprising that Peep Show keeps gaining more fans and collecting more awards along the way. I've mentioned it before in other reviews, but Channel 4 really does have a knack for finding and nurturing classic comedy - Father Ted, Spaced and Black Books instantly spring to mind - and Peep Show pretty much tops that list.
Considering I received the very first series on DVD to review without ever having heard of it, that's all the more remarkable. Four years later I'm eagerly awaiting each new series and, despite the occasional wobble along the way, Mark and Jeremy remain two of the funniest and most painfully believable characters on television.
Peep Show is cracking comedy and Series Five continues the excellent return to form we saw in Series Four. With the already commissioned Series Six on the way, here's hoping there are plenty more disastrous years ahead for Mark and Jeremy. It's wacky, it's uncomfortable, it's hilarious and, in the words of Jeremy, it's brilliant! Highly recommended.
Special features
- Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
- Peep Show Relationship Tree
- Deleted Scenes
- Sophie's Point of View
