Peep Show, TV review: A triumphant return for the El Dude Brothers
Everything unravelled spectacularly for David Mitchell and Robert Webb in the first episode of the show's final hurrah
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Your support makes all the difference.The "El Dude Brothers" were back on triumphant form for the first episode of Peep Show's final hurrah, or for Mark (David Mitchell) and Jez (Robert Webb), another series of monumental cock-ups – this didn't disappoint.
What makes this show glorious is that as a viewer you know that however promising things look for the lads, it will all go catastrophically wrong. Yet, the unfolding is the right shade of dark/bizarre that it's still unexpected (Jez drugging Mark; Jez and Super Hans trying to get Mark sectioned, for example). So while this began with Mark ensconced with a new William Morris-obsessed flatmate, Jerry (Tim Key), and working in a bank; Jez extolling the virtues of kipping in Super Hans' (Matt King) bath and Hans on the wagon, it all unravelled spectacularly. Things ended with a sozzled Hans evicting Jerry in his sleeping bag by the ankles in the night and dumping him in the lift while Jez "water-boarded" him with some booze. So wrong, yet so Peep Show.
Mark explained away the usurping as just "high jinks" by "the Croydon Bullingdon" and elsewhere Zoella, Candy Crush and Mark Zuckerberg all got a shout-out. These references could feel clumsily shoehorned in, if the characters weren't so well drawn by writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.
As per, the show's distinctive point-of-view filming style allowed for some absolute gems. Mark's "I'm the Wolf of Wall Street, look out, Boots, I'm going to buy 100 meal deals and eat them off a prozzie in the nude" will go straight on to best quote lists. Likewise Jerry's Lord of the Flies-esque eviction was a memorable one. "None of this is normal," he shouted as he was dragged out. It wasn't, but that's why we like it.
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