On Positive Thinking

In one of Peep Show's many pithy, quotable lines, Super Hans outlines his basic views on humanity. "People", he says "like Coldplay, and voted for the Nazis". If the universality of bad taste was a fact, Peep Show would have sunk like a stone after one series. But, given that the mass of people are often capable of telling shit apart from dirty clay, it's one of Channel 4's most popular shows.

It's also the best sitcom of the last ten years, and one of the best British sitcoms of all time. At the heart of its success is the writing. Unremittingly bleak, profoundly well observed, with its unique device of having access to the darkest thoughts of the protagonists ("I wonder if I'm capable of murder?"), it often resembles a play by Brecht or Sartre. Except the jokes are better. One scene involves Jeremy, the self-obsessed air-headed poseur declaring that "Honey Nut Cornflakes are just Frosties for wankers", to which the downtrodden, middle-management nothing Mark replies "Well, Frosties are just Cornflakes for people who can't handle reality". An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters could maybe write Shakespeare, but they could never sum up characters through their choice of breakfast cereal with such skill.

Mark and Jeremy (and their ever-present internal monologues) aside, Peep Show has a beautifully drawn characters. Prime among these is the grotesquely thrusting and high-powered Johnson, the kind of black man that David Cameron has wet dreams about, but also deserving mention is the Christian hedonist Nancy (seen here as Sally, the most beautiful girl in the room) and Mark's frumpy yet cute ex-wife, Sophie. The focus given to the perspective of the two main characters allows the characters to fully develop and emerge, as rarely happens in conventional sitcoms, with multiple stories and a third person viewpoint. I know that Johnson and Mark share a taste for The Lighthouse Family because I've been in Johnson's car, and heard what's on Mark's iPod. With this level of detail, Peep Show makes other sitcoms look artificial - the cast of Friends and Coupling seem to live in a world without music, unless you count Pheobe's ten second punchline songs.

So far, so gushing. But the ultimate reason for Peep Show's success is its relentless realism, and the grimness that actually follows. Before the Credit Crunch, when Gordon Brown's skill at maintaining economic growth seemed almost magical, Jeremy was arguing that in the new economic climate "we don't make tractors out of pig iron any more - we chill out, fuck around on the Playstation...", while Mark, the hero of Peep Show, was reminding us of the need to "log in, and grind out" and that you can't, in fact "make money by drinking margharitas through a curly straw". The constant defeat of the main characters fits with lived experience, as opposed to the absurd, workless lives and surreal happy ending of Friends.

Peep Show has many admirers, but it has a core of fans - people who have been over-educated due to the massive expansion of higher education, and understimulated in work because of the subsequent glut of graduates in the labour market. The twin fates of Mark, in his soulless data entry job ("I can pretend I'm entering data for MI5...") and Jeremy, a 'creative' who can find no post in the 'knowledge economy' ("I'm dangerously bored") chime with millions. The continued success and resonance of Peep Show are proof of the power of negative thinking, and the hilarity of hearing the truths that we dare not admit to ourselves simply stated.