After touching on monks, The Atlas Mountains, Moroccan cuisine, Corfu, adultery, The Hairy Bikers, obsession and stalking, it ended with Mark scribbling on a block of cheddar with a blue pen to create a “tasty young Stilton” and drinking a “Moroccan” cocktail made of water, rum, vinegar, lettuce and salt with a theologian called Angus. Remember when Mark led Jeremy to believe their downstairs neighbour Toni’s sister Pauline had cancer? With Jeremy’s gay relationship at the centre, last night’s episode harked back to those good old days in ways recent series just haven’t. The first two series used surreal jokes to prod issues including sexuality, race, politics and disease. The best thing about Peep Show when it started in 2003 was its excruciating weirdness. “Oh I’m sure you’re… full of cum,” Mark answers, glancing disgustedly at the Fruit Corner yoghurt in his hand.

After describing gay sex as “like getting your car fixed at the actual dealership, they know all the codes” and calling his life “a 24/7 blowjob bonanza”, Jez worries he’s too old for Joe, that he’s not “young, dumb and full of cum”. Mark and Jez’s subsequent conversation is gold. That would be his dream.” Jeremy and Joe’s orgasmic groans resound in the background.

It’s like there are two Jeremys in there humping each other. “Once upon a time I might have woken to the sound of a songthrush,” says Mark’s internal monologue as he stares into the bedroom mirror, “Now it’s a couple of guys pounding the living daylights out of each other. Last night’s third instalment began with the El Dude Brothers coming to terms with Jeremy and Joe’s relationship, and unravelled into the weirdest, most disgusting and best episode of Peep Show in years. It started when they conspired to evict Jerry from Apollo House by trapping him in a sleeping bag, waterboarding him with tepid lager and bunging him into a lift, and gloriously intensified when Mark used his webcam to inadvertently watch Jeremy make love to Joe, the boyfriend of Megan, who he’s life-coaching. But after the first episode introduced – and then quickly got rid of – Mark’s new flatmate Jerry, the focus has shifted back to the nitty gritty of Mark and Jez’s relationship. With Super Hans sober, Mark living with a new flatmate, Dobby shacked up with a new hipster boyfriend in New York and Jeremy experimenting (even more than usual) with his sexuality, the ninth and final series of Peep Show has begun in slightly unfamiliar fashion. Like if Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm and the British version of The Office had an old baby, and then that baby started a cult.Warning, this blog discusses the third episode of the ninth series of Peep Show in detail. The show is known for its hilarious rapid-fire dialogue and social commentary, its excruciating as well as completely ridiculous situations, but also for its brutal realism and depressing twists and turns. Stylistically, the show utilitizes point of view shots, with the thoughts of the main characters audible as voice-overs. Mark, a loan manager with a bleak and cynical outlook on life, is responsible but socially inept, while Jeremy, a lazy and unemployed would-be musician who lives in Mark's spare room, maintains a more confident but equally unproductive worldview.

Starting its run in 2003, the show follows the lives of Mark Corrigan and Jeremy 'Jez' Usbourne, two dysfunctional, codependent friends who share a flat in Croydon, South London. After an unbearable 3-year wait, the 9th and final season of Peep Show will finally start airing this November.

Peep show season 9