Peep Show

Peep Show ran on Channel 4 from 2003 to 2015, nine series and fifty-four episodes, and by 2010 had become the longest-running comedy in the channel's history. Created by Andrew O'Connor, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, it was written by Armstrong and Bain with additional material from its stars, David Mitchell and Robert Webb. It never drew large audiences: early series hovered around a million viewers, and it was repeatedly recommissioned on the strength of its DVD sales.

Mark Corrigan (Mitchell) is a pessimistic, socially awkward loan manager who would rather be a historian; Jeremy Usbourne (Webb) is the unemployed would-be musician living in his spare room. The show's device is in its title. Almost everything is seen from one of the two men's points of view, sometimes through cameras strapped to the actors' heads, with their inner monologues laid over the action in voice-over, a technique Armstrong and Bain borrowed from a Channel 4 documentary that had itself borrowed it from Being John Malkovich. Olivia Colman, as Mark's colleague Sophie, Matt King as Jeremy's bandmate Super Hans, and Paterson Joseph as the swaggering boss Alan Johnson fill out the world.

It won the Rose d'Or for Best European Sitcom in 2004, the BAFTA for Best Situation Comedy in 2008 and, a year later, a BAFTA for Mitchell's performance. The Guardian ranked it ninth among the best television shows of the twenty-first century, and a 2019 Radio Times poll named it the thirteenth-greatest British sitcom.