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HIGHLIGHTS
PEEP SHOW Channel 4, Wed 11 Nov, 10pm. Jez and Mark's point-of-view misadventures come to a close in the final series of this offbeat sitcom. See preview, left.
THE LAST PANTHERS
Sky Atlantic, Thu 12 Nov, 9pm. Classy jewel-heist thriller starring Samantha Morton and John Hurt that follows the fall-out after a large-scale diamond robbery.
RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER Xbox One, Fri 13 Nov. 2013's Tomb Raider added a new level of emotional resonance to Lara Croft's adventures. Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of Terry) returns as writer on the second instalment of this stunning reboot.
STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT PC, PS4, Xbox One, Thu 19 Nov. Star Wars fever grips the world this December so grab a light sabre and drop into the biggest battles in sci-fi as you prepare for The Force Awakens.
JESSICA JONES Netflix, Fri 20 Nov. Krysten Ritter plays a world-weary ex-superhero who runs a New York detective agency. Marvel's latest Netflix collaboration has links to the wider MCU, Daredevil, Luke Cage and The Defenders. See review, page 126.
TRANSPARENT Amazon, Fri 4 Dec. Return of the Golden Globe-winning transgender dramedy starring Jeffrey Tambor, with Jay Duplass, Amy Landecker and Judith Light brilliant as his squabbling siblings.
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD DVD/Blu-ray, Mon 7 Dec. The complete first season of the undead offshoot from The Walking Dead follows a new group of survivors as they face the zombie hordes.
DOCTOR WHO BBC One, Fri 25 Dec. More time-travelling adventures with Pete Capaldi in the annual Christmas episode.
SHERLOCK BBC One, Fri 1 Jan. Everyone's favourite super sleuth (Benedict Cumberbatch) heads back to Victorian Britain for this quirky one-off festive special.
AGENT CARTER FOX, Jan. Further Marvel action but this time set just after WW2 as Hayley Atwell takes the title role in this espionage spin-off from Captain America.
5 Nov 2015–4 Feb 2016 THE LIST 127
LAST LOOK
As Peep Show prepares for its grand finale, Henry Northmore chats to writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong about how hard it was to end it all
N ot many comedies last nine series and even fewer stay as fresh and painfully funny as Peep Show. This quirky sitcom literally got inside the heads of Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) and Jez Usborne (Robert Webb), a dysfunctional duo sharing a flat in in Croydon. First hitting our screens back in 2003, Peep Show is now officially the longest running comedy in Channel 4 history.
Never a conventional sitcom, its most obvious stylistic aspect is the point-of-view shots that gave viewers access to some uncensored private thoughts of the main characters. They were both equally l awed albeit in very different ways: Mark was socially awkward while Jez was outgoing and reckless. The show’s creators and writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong were willing to take the programme to far darker places than most comedies (witness the ‘bad thing’ in episode four of season one for a prime example).
However all good things must end and Peep Show is getting set to bow out. ‘It takes us roughly nine months to write the show,' explains Sam Bain. ‘And we were desperate not to do a bad one. Doing a i nal series was a great impetus for us to really go into it and say, “what could we do that we’d really like to end on”?’
‘It felt like we’d been doing it for a long time, and eventually you need to say, “this is the last one”,’ adds Armstrong. ‘And we thought it would be really inspiring to try and write a really, really good last series.’
Since Peep Show, Bain and Armstrong have written several other darkly comic creations including suicide bomber movie Four Lions (with Chris Morris), cop comedy-drama Babylon and student sitcom Fresh Meat (which also starts its i nal season this autumn). It was also the i rst major role for Olivia Colman, as Sophie Chapman, the object of Mark's fumbling affections. Since then Colman has picked up multiple awards for Broadchurch, Tyrannosaur, The Iron Lady and Twenty Twelve. She's back for the last series alongside several old favourites. According to Armstrong: ‘Dobby [Isy Suttie] is back again as is Super Hans [Matt King], but there are a couple of others who show up who we’re not going to reveal. They’re fun plot points, so I think it’s more fun not to say.’ Considering the car wreck that is often Mark and Jez's life, littered with failed relationships, ruined career prospects and petty squabbles, don't expect everyone to live happily ever after. ‘I think we had to be faithful to what’s funny,’ says Bain. ‘In the i nal episode, we dei nitely didn’t go down the sentimental “let’s all have a nice time” route. We went for the funny option, and funny, nine times out of ten in Peep Show, means quite a lot of suffering and pain, because people who are happy aren’t that funny. So we never had much doubt about that. But then we thought about the i nal scene quite a lot. Hopefully we haven’t left them too broken and destroyed.’
Peep Show series nine starts on Channel 4, Wed 11 Nov, 10pm.