It is the texture of the writing that excels. Has anyone rendered the thought-processes of neurotic perpetual-adolescent males with more hilarious precision?

Paul Hoggart, The Times, 6th June 2008

To be honest, this has been a rather uneven fifth series of the Croydon flat-mate sitcom. At its best - in the second and fifth episodes - it's been bang on form and hilarious, but it's often been middling, verging on average. There's been the odd great line here and there, but nothing to write home about.

At the end of it all, you're left wondering if a fifth series was really for the best. Perhaps nipping things in the bud at the end of the fourth season - when things had reached a suitable moment to exit - would have been for the best. Ten out of ten for effort, though.

Paul Strange, DigiGuide, 6th June 2008

Jessie Armstrong and Sam Bain's sitcom continues to plumb the darker depths of the human condition with blisteringly funny results.

The Metro, 23rd May 2008

Radio Times Blog

Peep Show is wonderful, a model of edgy comedy perfection, with sharply brilliant, misanthropic, literate scripts from writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and perfectly deadpan performances by David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Written by Alison Graham. From The Radio Times, 8th May 2008

Unlike the patchy That Mitchell and Webb Look, Peep Show draws on the strengths of writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.

Mark and Jez's theatre visit produced some great lines - "I can't believe coming here costs more than a film" and "If this was on television, nobody would be watching." There was a spot-on realism here that perhaps got lost in the outrageous antics of the last season.

The only question is: five series in, where is there for the characters to go? On the evidence of the opener, it should be fun finding out.

Dugald Baird, The Guardian, 7th May 2008

Peep Show returned on Friday evening to further explore the almost limitless sleaziness - moral, physical and intellectual - of Jeremy and Mark.

This week, they found themselves locked into a double date at the theatre, a prospect that appalled Mark. "Relax," Jeremy reassured him. "It's all different now... they've moved on. They use proper actors, you know, Americans, and people off the telly, and they're all based on films, so its fine.". Scabrous slapstick and base motives are the core of the comedy, but that kind of leftfield detail is what gilds it.

Thomas Sutcliffe, The Independent, 5th May 2008

It was Peep Show business as usual, with Mark trying to pass off his fearfulness as moral principle, Jez having no principles at all and almost every line proving quotably great.

Admittedly, the plot did get a bit bogged down in the second half. Even so, now that both Have I Got News for You and Peep Show have returned, Friday nights are back the way they should be.

James Walton, The Telegraph, 5th May 2008

As always, the writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain have got our thought-processes exactly right. Not many people would vocalise these particular thoughts like Mark and Jez do on this occcasion, but, let's face it, we've all thought something similar. And that, above all else, is Peep Show's enduring success.

annawaits, TV Scoop, 4th May 2008

Things improved radically on Friday with the return of Channel 4's best comedy in the history of laughter. Yes! Peep Show's back!! I only discovered this gem last year but the complete DVD collection now sits proudly displayed on my shelf and I'm reliably informed that makes me immediately cool so way hey!

Most shows entering their fifth series would be showing signs of aging and losing the edge that made them so intriguing but that's not so here. Thanks to the surreal brains of writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain and the always wonderful performances from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, Peep Show appears to be going from strength to strength at a stage when other shows wilt under the pressure.

The world of Peep Show is surreal, of course, but the scripts and acting draw you into the world of Mark and Jez so well you don't want to leave. David Mitchell recently said he'd like Peep Show to carry on for years and, if this is the standard they can keep it to, I'd be happy about that too.

Luke, TheCustard.tv, 3rd May 2008

As we return for the fifth series of this engagingly filthy comedy, Mark (David Mitchell) is getting drunk and maudlin on wedding champagne as his flatmate Jeremy (Robert Webb) urges him to go out on a double-date: "Beggars can't be choosers, she's an actual woman."

Mark - remember, this is a man who once based his romantic strategy on the Siege of Stalingrad - arms himself with a copy of the Friends of the British Museum magazine and goes forth again to search for love...

I adore Peep Show and I adore Mark and Jeremy, an amiable pair of misfits trapped in a squalid, mutually destructive friendship. Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain's script is packed with the kind of quotable funny lines that should be on T-shirts, and Mitchell and Webb are both just marvellous.

Alison Graham, The Radio Times, 2nd May 2008

Perhaps the most consistently funny British sitcom since The Office

Michael Deacon, The Telegraph, 2nd May 2008

The Guardian visits the Peep Show set

"Standing in a muddy field on the set of the new fifth series of Peep Show, watching the three main actors chat with one another, something occurs to me. People in general think men are Jez, Peep Show's shallow self-styled libertine; men themselves wish they were Super Hans - tall, confident, elegantly wasted, utterly amoral; but men are really Mark, a highly moral, but sexually repressed conservative whose idea of a good date movie is the four-hour German submarine epic, Das Boot.

Written by Ben Marshall. From The Guardian, 26th April 2008

Peep Show is the best comedy of the decade

A blog entry on The Guardian website claiming Peep Show is the best comedy of the 2000s.

Written by David Pollock. From The Guardian, 16th April 2007

There's definitely a case for Mitchell and Webb to be on the TV 52 weeks of the year, as long as the quality of their own series and that of Peep Show continues. Last nights second of the new run was excellent, and easily the second funniest show of the day (after, naturally, Have I Got News For You hosted by Bill Bailey)!

QS Comedy