Every success story features moments of crippling doubt. Times where everything teetered on the brink of collapse. Peep Show is no different. What ultimately became Channel 4’s longest-running sitcom was in permanent danger of being discarded from the start. Nobody, not even its creators and stars, had particularly high expectations for it.
After a protracted development, beset by scepticism about its problematic shooting style, Peep Show finally reached our screens 20 years ago. It depicted the bleak lives of “the El Dude brothers” – the delusional Jeremy Usbourne, a selfish layabout half-heartedly pursuing a music career, and the uptight Mark Corrigan, an emotionally repressed loan manager – in excruciating detail. Former university friends coexisting in a Croydon flat, they drift into middle age as mutual resentment festers.
Audiences got to know Mark and Jeremy intimately through the series’s use of internal monologues, adding another layer of jokes to dense scripts. Peep Show was shunted around Channel 4’s Friday night schedule and nearly cancelled several times. Fortunately, it survived for 54 episodes – long enough to become a cultural phenomenon, launching the careers of the two talented double acts at its heart – writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, plus actors David Mitchell and Robert Webb.
