Peep Show

It's a problem many struggling television writers would love to suffer: What if the network wants too many episodes? While many writers find it difficult to get greenlit past the pilot stage, the rare show that does keep receiving those checks from the man with the big cigar often suffer from the law of diminishing returns. Concepts which were once innovative and exciting become repetitive and stale. The challenge in TV is not in producing a great idea, so much as continuing to come up with good ones.

Such is the concern with each new season of cult sitcom Peep Show. Since debuting in 2003 it has been one of the most innovative comedies on British TV, while still managing to be one of the funniest. The last season, the fourth, closed off one of the main story arcs and seemed to tie things off neatly — albeit painfully — for the two central characters. So it is not without trepidation that the new season is set to begin in the UK. Will number five be a season too many?

The show's most obvious innovation was apparent from the start — it is filmed from the alternating viewpoints of its two protagonists, Mark and Jez, with voiceovers allowing the viewers to hear their thoughts. In common with many sitcoms, the yawning chasm between the characters' opinion of themselves, and the way that others see them, is a central source of humor. It is exploited brilliantly throughout the first four seasons.

Peep Show is also innovative in terms of its subject matter; it's never been afraid to feature the sort of topics that even a gritty drama would handle with kid gloves. So far, episodes have mocked homelessness, hard drug use, unrequited gay crushes, racism, self-harm and mental illness. And that's just when the show has been at it's funniest. It is this raw honesty about modern life (and modern men in particular) that has set Peep Show ahead of the contemporary sitcom pack.

In other ways, however, Peep Show has always been a rather conservative show. It's based around an odd couple sharing a house. Setting repressed, socially awkward loan manager Mark against the more free-spirited, though no less inept, failing musician Jez, it follows a template used by several (dozen) sitcoms in the past. The most commonly used locations — the house, the office, the pub — are all familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the genre.

But this has also been one of Peep Show's strengths. The solid framework at its center is what provides sufficient freedom to explore the outer reaches of 21st century life. So it's with neither disappointment nor surprise that season five kicks off with one of the central tropes of sitcom-land: the double date. When Jez railroads Mark into going out with a couple of girls, the casual viewer could be mistaken for thinking that it's business as usual for a male-oriented comedy.

This is not the case. Still unmistakably Peep Show, it's not long before we're eyeball-deep in burglary, false imprisonment, sexually-transmitted infections and an attempt to avoid paying too much for wine without looking like a cheapskate. Once again, appalling as the unedited thoughts of two deeply selfish idiots may be, rare is the viewer who can watch without at least a hint of self-recognition (and a healthy helping of laughter).

And maybe this is reason enough to have hope for Peep Show's continued success. In depicting the characters' losing battle against the modern world, and losing battle to "grow up," the show has a limitless supply of material. As long as the sharp lines and farcical situations remain honest, there's no reason why Peep Show couldn't go on forever — or at least as long as the actual maturation process of the modern British man. And what's that — 35, 45 years?