YMMV / Peep Show

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: There's a good meta example in Peep Show and Tell, the "making of" documentary about the series: just try not to recoil in horror at David Mitchell passionately snogging the POV camera.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Who is worse? Sophie or Mark? Let's consider the options.
    • Sophie. A bitch who manipulated Mark into fatherhood, didn't let him name the baby because he wasn't at the christening, played him and Jeff off against each other, tried to get him to take drugs when he didn't want to, lost him a job and told people he jilted her when she ran off.
    • On the other hand, Mark's a Jerkass who stalked her and got into a petty rivalry with Jeff over her, got Jez to make nasty phone calls to her over her getting a job that he had no more right than her to anyway (and it turned out she didn't want), used her as a human shield, abandoned her while in labour and decided to marry her to get a big house only to try to jilt her by hiding in the church. (Ironically Olivia Colman dislikes her while David Mitchell thinks she's alright). Or maybe they're both as bad as each other.
  • Jeff as a better person than Mark. He was more of a support to Sophie during her pregnancy than Mark (the baby's father) was. He hasn't, to our knowledge, done anything as bad as some of the things Mark's done throughout each episode, and even then his tormenting of him only got serious when Mark insulted Jeff's mother in a bid for him to retaliate.
  • Elena has more than a few moments of stupidity comparable to Jeremy; however, it's difficult to tell whether this is some kind of facade that she maintains while stringing him along, or if she's really just as vacuous as he is.
  • Nancy: Manipulative, hypocritical bitch or insensitive but well-meaning and kindhearted with her own interpretation of what it means to be Christian?
  • Super Hans: Crack-addled maniac, or Obfuscating Stupidity, to some extent? When Merry is sectioned, it's Super Hans, not Jeremy, who has the presence of mind to seek ownership papers for the pub she's just gifted them. By Series 8, he's stating his desire to settle down - briefly, he's even Mark's boss - and by Series 9 he's found a wife (briefly - but still). He appears to have a good, if distant, relationship with his twin sons. All of which suggests that even a complete stoner like Super Hans has a greater level of emotional maturity than Jez.
  • Dobby: The kind, sympathetic woman who knows how to help ease Mark out of his shell? Or a realistic version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who slowly reveals a more flakey personality, a group of friends who Mark cannot get on with and eventually abandons Mark for what she what she really wants whilst leading him on re moving in with him?
• Award Snub: Ricky Gervais publicly blasted BAFTA for not giving the show any nominations, calling it the best British sitcom since Father Ted.
• Badass Decay:
  • Super Hans starts off as an unemployed dosser, failed musician, drug dealer and crack addict, with an air of charismatic mystery and tendencies towards violence. As the show progresses, he drastically tones down the drug use and begins to work honest jobs. He ends up as a rather mellow bed and bathroom salesman, wearing a suit in every appearance, just like Mark. He even becomes Mark's boss.
    • Provides a nice contrast with Jez, his fellow band member and musician, who forever spins his wheels and never moves on or grows up throughout the entirety of the series.
• Better on DVD: Watching each episode in order allows the viewer to more easily follow all the arcs rather than just the main ones.
• Broken Base: Fans cannot reach a consensus on which theme tune was a better fit for the show: the proprietary, lyricless tune in the first series (named Pip Pop Plop) or Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger (specifically the lyrics "I'm not sick but I'm not well/And I'm so hot 'cause I'm in Hell"), used in all subsequent episodes.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Much of Mark and Jeremy's inner monologues are this trope, considering they mostly consist of things they would never say out loud.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Super Hans, you drug-addled lunatic.
  • Smooth operator Alan Johnson.
• Fridge Brilliance: In the opener of Series 7, Mark reveals he has a fear of children. Then you remember back to the very first episode where he is constantly bullied by a gang of children.
• Genius Bonus: When Super Hans temporarily becomes obsessed with running in Series 7, he calls up Jeremy to rescue him after having "accidentally run to Windsor". The distance between Apollo House and Windsor is exactly 26.2 miles, the exact length of a marathon.
  • "Bishop Weed", Super Hans' moniker for cannabis he managed to find at a Christian rock festival, is actually the name of a real plant.
  • Jeremy blurts out "What I'm saying is they should be more honest. At least, Tony Adams from the IRA, he's like, "Yeah, I shoot people. I like shooting people."" while talking politics with Mark and Johnson, the obvious aspect of the joke being that he's got Gerry Adams' name wrong, and the more subtle part is that Adams has always been very adamant that he was never in the IRA and has never killed anyone.
• Growing the Beard: Robert Webb feels that Series 2 was where the show hit its stride.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the "Handyman" episode, Mark's line "The Beastie Boys fought and possibly died for my right to party." was a little less amusing after Adam "MCA" Yauch passed away in 2012 followed by the death of John Berry in 2016 which then lead to them disbanding. What's worse is that the episode first aired exactly 5 years before MCA's passing and 9 years before Berry's.
  • Toni's comments about Robin Williams become far more uncomfortable for viewers watching after his suicide in 2014.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "Seasonal Beatings", Mark comments that his present for Dobby which he ordered online hasn't arrived in time. With this episode Having been filmed in September 2010, the creators had no idea that come December, many Christmas presents ordered online really did fail to reach people on time due to the unusually large snowfall.
  • In S3E4 (2005), Mark states to himself that Big Suze "probably got a title." As of 2009, her actress Sophie Winkleman's formal title is "Lady Frederick Windsor."
• Ho Yay: Mark and Jeremy get this treatment at various points, with most of it coming from Jeremy, who's also hinted to be bisexual. The both of them tend to sabotage each other's efforts with the opposite sex and routinely hug and even kiss each other when in high spirits.
  • Notably, Mark's best match is Dobby who Jeremy falls in love with because she's a female version of himself, which means by proxy he's dating a female Jeremy (albeit without Jez's extreme narcissism).
  • Jeremy and Super Hans, especially when Jez finally remembers "the bad thing" in an early episode.
  • Mark wrestling Jeremy to the ground in "Burgling". When Mark despairs that he will never find "the one", Jez thinks to himself, "I'm his one."
  • When Mark is picturing Jeremy working with him:
  Mark: (in his mind) Great, he’ll be able to pay off the Blockbusters. Plus, I’ll be able to order him around. Not horribly, just "Jeremy, could you file this for me?", "Could you take that?" "Could you suck this for me?" (realisation) Jesus! Where did that come from??
  • "Dance Class" consists of Mark, Jeremy, Sophie and Nancy spending a weekend at a classmate’s country house. One scene has the five of them go skinny-dipping in a lake. Mark, at first, is hesitant as everyone roots for him to take his trunks off and jump in. Jeremy, in particular, appears to be the most interested as he starts a chant of "Off! Off! Off!" and even pulls on his trunks as a joke. Later on, the group decide to play Spin the Bottle and Mark and Jeremy end up kissing each other… on the lips… in the most passionate way possible. Although a two-second kiss would’ve done just fine, the both of them go all the way with it and make out for almost twenty seconds, with Mark’s only complaint being Jeremy’s lack of flossing. Yeah…
  • Jeremy trying to grab Mark's penis to see if he has an erection for Big Suze.
  • In "Quantocking", Mark gives Jez his fleece.
    • Also, from the same episode:
  Mark: (about Jez) He's an idiot, but he's my idiot.
  • After Sophie runs away, crying and sobbing and immediately wanting to divorce, Jeremy sits in the seat in the back of the car, where Sophie previously sat, next to Mark and the episode ends with the car driving off, making the two of them look like newly-wedded husbands.
• Jerkass Woobie: Mark and Jeremy. Jeremy with Mark. And Super Hans. And Big Suze’s one-time boyfriend, Stu. And he was a ‘handyman’ for a musician he admired…a musician who expected him to be ‘handy’.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Everyone wants to chew on Dobby's weird hair.
  • "Hitler promised not to invade Czechoslovakia, Jeremy."
  • "Four naan, Jeremy? Four?! That's insane."
  • "The secret ingredient is crime."
  • "Mark... you're in the stationery cupboard."^note In May 2020, a series of image edits became popular, which involved a scene from "The Interview" where Jeff says the line after discovering Mark in a cupboard, with edits being made to blank out some of the letters to make him say a completely new sentence along with the second panel having Mark in a different situation related to the new phrase.
  • "AN X HAS GONE! OH MY GOD, JEREMY, AN X IS MISSING!"
  • "And that's good, is it? What's good about that?" has become a common refrain when someone posts an unfunny or low-effort meme.
  • "NO TURKEY?"
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Jeff crowns his campaign of sexual humiliation against Mark by sending him out to buy condoms for him and Sophie. Although Jeff's example is debatable given he has never drugged Gerrard, started weird crush clubs or went round waterboarding lodgers.
  • If you didn't think that Mark was an amoral coward before he falsely accused his gym instructor of molesting him (costing the man his livelihood,) because he was too much of a coward to tell Sophie he didn't want to marry her, then you surely must now.
• One True Pairing:
  • David Mitchell considers Dobby to be Mark's "one." (the relevant quote is at 41:22)
  • Elena seems to have been the best fit for Jeremy. He loved her, was livid and devastated when she accepted Gail's proposal at the party, saw Gail as a true threat to his happiness, and was so afraid to lose Elena that he subconsciously tried to kill Gail twice.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Not as extreme a case as some other shows, but Series 8 is generally considered to be something of a creative slump: while still immensely quotable and having one or two great episodes, many viewers felt that Dobby's shift in personality from geeky office drone to pretentious hipster felt abrupt, and that the love triangle between her, Mark and Jeremy felt contrived. Other complaints include the addition of Dobby’s obnoxious friends to the cast, Mark and Jeremy’s relationship becoming less love/hate and more genuinely mean-spirited, and the either complete absence or much reduced role of fan favourite characters from previous series like Johnson, Big Suze and Sophie.
  • Series 9 also had a mixed reception. While some saw it as a return to form, others disliked April being described as the love of Mark's life rather than Dobby, more forced romantic sub-plots and it being less funny than the classic series.
  • The fanbase in general seems to be heavily split on which series marks the high and low points of the whole show. The most common opinion seems to be that the first 4 series are the series peak, while later seasons range from middling to good. Others argue that the first series is fairly weak as a starting season, while many find that Series 4 (and the Holiday episode in particular) marked the moment the series shit the bed and lost believability. Series 7 also often tends to be held in a higher regard than the 4 surrounding seasons, largely due to the heartwarming opener and the two holiday finales.
• Signature Scene: Two moments stand out as being the best-known examples of Peep Show's particularly brutal brand of Cringe Comedy:
  • Jeremy eating the dog.
  • The "no turkey" scene, where Jeremy pretends to have forgotten to get the Christmas turkey as a joke and Mark, believing Jeremy really did forget it, unleashes a legendary tirade...only for Jeremy to sheepishly reveal that he was in fact joking.
• Squick: Again, Jeremy eating the dog. Closely followed by Mark and the pheasant: "You've pulled its bloody head off!".

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