The Guardian has reported on the recommissioning of Peep Show - and even suggested it could go on and on. Blogger Julia Raeside judges:

To sustain a sitcom in which the protagonists aren’t very likable is a feat in itself. Why do we love Mark and Jeremy so much when they include on their collective CV dog-eating, soiling themselves in church, marrying out of embarrassment and pooing in a swimming pool? They are horrible and yet somehow enormously loveable. Perhaps it’s because we can hear what they’re thinking and, no matter how dark their internal mutterings become, there is a corner in every viewer’s mind that knows what they are going to say just before they say it.

And she’s precisely correct, of course. There’s little worse than hearing how bad things are in the British sitcom-scape, so its grand to see a show that has approached the genre in a new way and given us these characters that while physically normal are in every way as ghastly as those we met in Royston Vasey, or on The Catherine Tate Show.

The internal monologues of Mark and Jeremy, while key to the nature of the series, are the setup to virtually all major comedy moments in the series. It’s a unique feat to bring a clever comic device in and then use it in such a manner several times an episode; it’s a gimmick, but one that behaves like every other element of the writing. It’s never out of place, and that’s why Peep Show is a success and could easily run and run.

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It of course wonderful to see Mitchell and Webb back on our screens in the BAFTA award-winning Peep Show, the unique Channel 4 sitcom in which we hear the innermost thoughts of the protagonists, and see things as they see them.

Written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain Peep Show is hilariously consistent, and really is Channel 4’s comedy jewel.

However what I didn’t know is that one of the men behind the idea is Andrew O’Connor - remember him? Described as an “actor, comedian, magician, television presenter” O’Connor is behind a great deal of Channel 4’s comedy output. A long way from No 73 with Sandi Toksvig. He also directed Mitchell & Webb’s 2007 movie The Magicians, as well Ricky Gervais’ brown nose exercises with Christopher Guest and others.

There’s definitely a case for Mitchell & Webb to be on the TV 52 weeks of the year, as long as the quality of their own series and that of Peep Show continues. Last nights second of the new run was excellent, and easily the second funniest show of the day (after, naturally, Have I Got News For You, hosted this week by Bill Bailey)!

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