Peep Show: Series 6

Details

Mark and Jeremy are still sharing their Croydon flat, but the credit crunch is beginning to make life even more difficult than usual. Mark may have traditionally been the more financially successful of the two, but when JLB Credit closes its British operation he suddenly finds himself unemployed and dumped onto the job market alongside thousands of other people. For somebody who has always relied on his career to provide at least the illusion that he's the responsible one, it's not a particularly comfortable experience.

Jeremy, meanwhile, has spent years stubbornly refusing to get a proper job and living off anybody foolish enough to support him. Naturally, now that there are hardly any jobs available, he decides that he actually wants one. His self-proclaimed musical talent remains stubbornly unrecognised and his usual collection of questionable ideas isn't producing much income either, leaving both flatmates facing the unfamiliar prospect of having very little money.

Mark's redundancy also leaves him vulnerable to Alan Johnson, who's already sniffing around for money from easily impressionable people to fund his latest business venture. Unfortunately, Mark and Johnson have never enjoyed what you'd describe as an entirely balanced relationship and Mark remains desperate for the approval of the man he considers his professional mentor. Still, with JLB disappearing around him, there's always Dobby from IT to fall back on.

However, Mark's attempts to pursue Dobby become considerably more complicated when Sophie announces that she's pregnant. Worse still, thanks to the increasingly tangled relationships between the residents of Mark's flat, either Mark or Jeremy could be the father. With Sophie determined to have the baby, Mark suddenly finds himself contemplating the possibility of fatherhood whilst simultaneously trying to work out whether he has any future with Dobby.

Jeremy has his own romantic problems when he falls hopelessly in love with Elena, a beautiful dope-dealing musician and activist living in the same building. Unfortunately, Elena already has a girlfriend and Jeremy's attempts to negotiate this relatively minor obstacle proceed with exactly the sort of judgement and restraint we've come to expect from him.

So, with unemployment, impending fatherhood, doomed relationships, disastrous business ventures and the usual assortment of terrible decisions ahead of them, life isn't getting any easier for the El Dude Brothers. But then, if Mark and Jeremy ever actually became successful and happy, it probably wouldn't be Peep Show.

Picture & Sound

Apparently some viewers have started to dislike the point-of-view camerawork used in the programme - I'm not quite sure why - so there's less of it on offer in Series Six. However, the rather tight budget still appears to apply and the picture quality isn't really anything out of the ordinary.

There is one important caveat this time around. The discs supplied for review aren't the finished retail product and appear to be closer to the original press screeners. Normally I wouldn't review a title from non-final material, but because I'm a great fan of the show and they're extremely unlikely to differ significantly from the finished release, I've allowed them through our otherwise tough reviewing criteria.

With that in mind, the picture is perfectly watchable but hardly spectacular. Detail is adequate, colours are generally consistent and there are no significant problems with outlining or pixelisation. As with the previous series, the unconventional camerawork and relatively modest production values are far more important to the look of the programme than pristine DVD presentation.

Nevertheless, things become rather more confusing when you consider that Channel 4 are broadcasting Peep Show on their HD channel on Sky. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Sky HD - or Sky for that matter - so I can't confirm whether there's any drastic improvement in picture quality, or even whether the series was actually filmed in HD rather than simply being up-converted from the standard source material. If it really is available in full HD, perhaps the marketing department at Channel 4 might have considered a Blu-ray release too?

As with the previous DVD outings, there's very little to expect from the sound department. The 384Kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is more than sufficient for the programme's needs, with the all-important dialogue remaining crisp and clear whilst the musical score is as catchy as ever. Overall, it's nothing special, but then there's very little here that would benefit from an elaborate multichannel soundtrack anyway.

Menu & Extras

Because I've not been supplied with the finished retail product, there's no proper menu system to review. The preview discs simply allow you to select an episode or view the extras in one go. Based on the previous Peep Show releases, I'd expect the retail version to continue with the familiar scored and animated menus, but since I haven't actually seen the finished disc I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

Fortunately, the supplementary material itself is present and there's a reasonable collection of featurettes offering fans another look behind the scenes of the award-winning series. First up is the twenty-three-minute Behind the Scenes featurette which, as you'd expect, goes behind the scenes as a camera wanders around the sets picking up comments from most of the cast, both old and new, along with the writers.

Naturally, there's plenty of input from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, delivered in their usual deadpan fashion, and it all adds up to a surprisingly informative and amusing featurette. Unfortunately, the following three-minute How to Make Peep Show brings things back to earth with a bump. Essentially recapping what we've just learnt, but in crudely animated form, it runs through how an episode of Peep Show is created from start to finish.

Next are three minutes of Outtakes. I'm not generally a fan of outtakes where the cast simply fall about laughing, but Vera Filatova doing exactly that is surprisingly amusing. Elsewhere Robert Webb repeatedly fluffs his lines, Matt King has to deal with a disobedient snake and David Mitchell catches a spot of swine flu.

Staying on a similar theme, the four minutes of Deleted and Extended Scenes add very little to the material that actually made it to air. In fact, you occasionally have to think rather hard before working out exactly which bits were removed. Still, it's nice to see them included and they're certainly preferable to leaving potentially interesting material sitting unseen in an archive somewhere.

Finally, and as the title suggests, If Peep Show Was Filmed in Front of a Studio Audience demonstrates how the series could have been completely ruined by "inappropriate" audience participation. Over three cringe-worthy minutes, scenes from the first episode are subjected to whooping, clapping and laughter. It's painfully effective and demonstrates just how important the uncomfortable silences are to the programme's humour.

It's at times like these that you thank your lucky stars you don't have to endure American television comedy on a daily basis. Ah... Well, at least the American pilot of Peep Show failed to make an impression with the studio executives and we were spared another awful remake.

Overall

After the slight comedy hiccup of Series Three, Peep Show bounced back strongly with Series Four and maintained that standard throughout Series Five. Rather than showing any obvious signs of running out of steam, Series Six continues to find new and increasingly uncomfortable situations for Mark and Jeremy to stumble into.

One of the clever things about the series is that their lives genuinely continue to change around them. Mark and Jeremy may remain fundamentally the same dysfunctional people we met back in Series One, but they aren't trapped in the usual sitcom bubble where everything magically resets at the end of each episode. Relationships end, jobs disappear, people move on and the consequences of previous disasters have a habit of returning when they're least convenient.

Mark losing his job is therefore a particularly effective development. His career at JLB has always been one of the few things separating him from Jeremy in his own mind. Mark might be socially hopeless and permanently miserable, but at least he has a respectable job and Jeremy doesn't. Take that away and suddenly the gap between the two isn't quite as large as Mark would like to believe.

David Mitchell gets plenty of mileage out of Mark's resulting panic. This is a man who likes rules, routines and the comforting certainty of knowing where he's supposed to be every morning, so unemployment is almost uniquely designed to torment him. Throw in Johnson and his latest dubious business venture and you can almost see Mark desperately trying to convince himself that everything is still under control.

Jeremy deciding that he wants a job at precisely the moment the economy collapses is equally appropriate. Having spent years avoiding employment, responsibility and virtually anything else that might resemble adulthood, his timing is impeccable. Robert Webb continues to make Jeremy's selfishness and complete lack of self-awareness hilarious, particularly when his latest romantic obsession arrives in the shape of Elena.

The pregnancy storyline is where things become considerably more interesting. Sophie announcing that either Mark or Jeremy could be the father gives the series another ongoing thread and forces Mark to confront something considerably bigger than his usual worries about relationships, work and whether somebody at the office thinks he's weird. Potential fatherhood is one problem he can't simply hide in his flat and hope will disappear.

Olivia Colman continues to make Sophie increasingly interesting too. She's come a long way from simply being the slightly unattainable woman Mark was obsessed with in the early series and has gradually revealed enough neuroses of her own to fit comfortably into the increasingly dysfunctional world around her. Isy Suttie's Dobby also continues to be an excellent addition and still seems worryingly well suited to Mark - assuming, of course, that Mark can ever stop sabotaging the relationship long enough to realise it.

And then there are the supporting characters. Super Hans remains capable of appearing for only a few minutes and stealing an entire scene, whilst Johnson continues to exercise a bizarre hold over Mark that no amount of previous experience seems capable of breaking. The arrival of Elena gives Jeremy another opportunity to fall hopelessly in love at breakneck speed, with predictably disastrous consequences.

Already having won numerous awards and plaudits across the entertainment world - and even managing, thankfully, to survive a failed American pilot - Peep Show has developed the sort of cult following previously enjoyed by Channel 4's equally brilliant Spaced. The television audience may not be enormous, but impressive DVD sales continue to demonstrate that there's a loyal audience out there who want more.

That's particularly pleasing from the perspective of a site devoted to DVD. When I received that first Series One preview disc without ever having heard of Peep Show, I certainly didn't expect to still be reviewing Mark and Jeremy six series later. Yet here we are, and rather than merely watching out of habit, I'm still looking forward to finding out what terrible decisions they're going to make next.

With Channel 4 already signed up for a seventh series, let's hope the side-splitting laughter continues. Judging by the ending of Series Six, the writers have certainly given themselves plenty to work with and it's going to take something special to resolve the latest mess they've created.

Series Six is another cracking collection of episodes and proves there's still plenty of life left in Mark and Jeremy's confused little world. Highly recommended - although I do wish Channel 4 would stop releasing a new "complete" box set after every series in the hope that existing fans will trade one collection in for another.

Special features

• Behind the Scenes Featurette
• How to Make Peep Show Featurette
• Outtakes
• Deleted and Extended Scenes
• If Peep Show Was Filmed in Front of a Studio Audience Featurette