I was eight when Peep Show first aired on Channel 4. I don't think I actually watched it for the first time until I was about thirteen, maybe fourteen.
I had a small box television that I'd often watch late-night television on as a young teenager; with a satellite, I was bound to four different channels: BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV 3, and Channel 4. I'd spent nights watching Top Gear, QI, Mock the Week, various documentaries, and Peep Show.
As I got older, I rewatched the entire series, as it was on-going. I found its brilliance was a result of a very blatant humour that the British have: sarcasm. Its humour wasn't just nonsensical, but it displayed the sarcastic nature of two social outcasts that were both completely different to one-another, yet reliant in the fact that they find solace in their mutual awkwardness.
Mark is a simple man that is well-educated, reads, wants a great job in which he is actually challenged; Jeremy is a deadbeat low-life that doesn't work, yet wants to chill out and somehow get rich through music. They're both ambitious, but life has them tied down, as it just isn't that simple. They're thrown into this society that has these many reasons and functions, but they don't make sense to them; they don't appeal, and often enough Mark and Jeremy panic and take idiotic and drastic measures, resulting in some type of chaos.
While Peep Show ended in December, 2015, I found the show's conclusion near perfection. It ended with the characters doing the same thing they've always done: watching television together, discussing nonsense, hating each other, but ultimately depending on each other. Jeremy's "... are we going to be alright?" digs deep into the characters and their lack of sight into the future, yet it's ignored by Mark and is followed by a discussion of they would go about killing each other, then back to watching TV.
There's really never been anything quite like Peep Show, especially in British television. It was innovative, and dove deep into characters and scenarios we've never seen before. It quite literally captivates British life, and connects a widespread depression alongside it. There's a Mark and Jeremy inside of us all. They're a yin and yang.
In the end, the two characters remain exactly the same as they were back in 2003: tired, optimistic, idiotic, sarcastic, and absolutely fed-up.
