Tag: Mitchell and Webb

#oneaday Day 703: Peepo!

I finished a rewatch of Peep Show the other day, confirming for myself that I had indeed never watched it right to the end. Now I have, and I came away from it with some thoughts that I wanted to share, so that's what I'm going to do today.

Peep Show, for the unfamiliar, is a Channel 4 comedy show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, written by Sam Bain, Jesse Armstrong and Andrew O'Connor, with occasional contributions from Mitchell and Webb themselves. It's the show that put Mitchell and Webb on the comedy map for many people, and is noteworthy for its main gimmick of being shot entirely in "first-person" from the perspective of the various characters, including the occasional ability to hear their thoughts — hence the name. We're getting to "peep" into the most intimate parts of their lives, including their private thoughts, in a way that simply isn't possible in "reality".

From the beginning, Peep Show sets itself up as a show where its two main characters are heavily, heavily flawed. Mitchell's Mark Corrigan character is stuffy, socially anxious, nerdy and, at times, rather arrogant, while Webb's Jeremy Usborne is also arrogant, albeit in a different way, self-obsessed, selfish, unambitious and, at times, borderline deluded about the possible directions his life could go in.

Early in the series, one could argue that Mark is somewhat set up to be the "protagonist" of sorts, since much of the ongoing storylines follow his attempts to woo his work colleague, Sophie. As time goes on, though, the show becomes more generally about how both Mark and Jeremy find themselves on their own separate pathways towards self-destruction, each coming at the concept from a different direction. Mark approaches it from the angle of repeatedly fucking up the genuinely good things that happen in his life, while Jeremy's obsession with drugs, alcohol and sex to the almost complete exclusion of building a "normal" adult life makes his trajectory clear pretty early on.

In many ways, Mark and Jeremy are polar opposites, but they are also a lot more similar than they would care to admit. And, as the show progresses, one comes to realise that perhaps the "El Dude Brothers" perhaps aren't as close friends as they thought they were; indeed, the very last line of the show comes from Mark, looking at Jeremy, reflecting on the many trials and tribulations they have both faced — and inflicted on one another — and thinking "I simply must get rid of him". The implication, of course, is that Mark will never be able to get rid of Jeremy — not because the pair of them are incredibly close friends, but because they're stuck with one another, thanks to each other's most awful tendencies having rubbed off on each other to an exceedingly unhealthy degree.

Thus one could probably say that Peep Show is about toxic masculinity. And indeed there are plenty of examples of that throughout the show, with the main ones being Mark's erstwhile boss, Alan Johnson, who is an obnoxious "alpha male" business leader type — although later shown to have enjoyed success primarily through luck and charisma rather than actual talent — and Jeremy's friend "Super Hans", who in many ways is far more fucked up than Mark or Jeremy will ever be — though at times he does seem to have his shit together a lot more than the pair of them.

Interestingly, though, neither Mark or Jeremy are examples of toxic masculinity in quite the same way. Jeremy likes to talk a big game and make out that he's always getting women, but we see repeatedly throughout the show that he is completely incompetent in developing close interpersonal relationships. Mark, meanwhile, has aspirations for a while of being a big balls businessman like Johnson, but over time comes to accept that he is, at heart, a fairly unremarkable person — and that that is not necessarily a bad thing.

To be sure, the pair of them do engage in behaviour that is plenty toxic, often in the name of pursuing masculinity. But a lot of the time they do this for the sake of living up to a misguided sense of "ideals" rather than because they actually feel that way. Neither of them have a clue how to navigate the challenges that life repeatedly confronts them with, and neither of them really know how to be a stereotypical "man", in terms of the unattainable ideal they both have in their minds. And this leads them both down destructive paths that ultimately bring them both to their own downfall — multiple times.

But Peep Show isn't a bleak tragedy. While I'm sure many people watching the show do feel a bit bad for Mark and Jeremy, particularly by the time the final episode rolls around, the central duo are, at their core, figures to laugh at. The show is a comedy because the situations they keep getting into are so ridiculous, but I think a lot of the humour lands because it's plausible. You can picture people you know going down some of the roads that both Mark and Jeremy fling themselves headlong down. You might even have broken off friendships with similar degrees of toxicity that the pair of them demonstrate.

It's a cautionary tale in many ways, then. Neither Mark or Jeremy are "villains" as such, nor are either of them fundamentally "bad people". But one thing Peep Show demonstrates more than anything else is that it is very easy to find yourself circling the drain if you don't make at least a bit of an effort to get your life under control — and that, as you grow older, if you don't find a good balance between "things that make your life better" and "things that make you feel good in the short term", where those two things are seemingly in conflict with one another, you will almost certainly find yourself bitter, twisted, and if not alone, then certainly stuck with someone who is bad for you, and that you will never, ever be able to get rid of.

A downer ending? Perhaps. But it was perfect for the story the show was telling. It would have been easy to give everyone on the show a "happy" ending for the final episode, but as harsh as it sounds, I'm glad they didn't get it. They got the ending that they deserved — and that has pretty much ensured I will remember the way things concluded a lot more vividly than if everything was all neatly resolved and tied up with a little bow.

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1378: Oh, Ambassador

Given Dave on Demand's apparent inability to stream anything to my computer at present — we wanted to watch the last episode of Dave Gorman's Modern Life is Goodish — I decided to check out Mitchell and Webb's new show Ambassadors earlier, and was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered.

Mitchell and Webb are an excellent comedy duo, and have proven themselves to be pretty adaptable and flexible through stuff like Peep Show and their sketch show. Of course, David Mitchell usually plays characters that are reasonably close to his real-life persona — or perhaps he adapts his real-life persona to be closer to the characters he plays? — and Robert Webb usually plays slightly supercilious, smug arseholes, but the pair of them actually have a surprising amount of range outside their most well-known roles as Mark and Jeremy from Peep Show.

Ambassadors is a good example of this. The show wasn't at all what I was expecting, but then, I went into it reasonably blind, so this perhaps isn't altogether surprising. I was expecting something along the lines of a modern-day Yes, Minister type thing, with bumbling, incompetent British officials having to deal with comic shenanigans in some far-off country, but what I actually got was something a little more serious. Oh, there was still plenty of ridiculousness along the way, for sure, but the ridiculousness wasn't the main point of the show; in other words, it was more of a "comedy drama" than a straight-up comedy.

Mitchell plays the British ambassador to the fictional country Tazbekistan, while Webb plays his second-in-command — who is actually a little more assertive and confident than his "superior", but who is also being blackmailed for some reason or another that hasn't yet become altogether clear. They're supported by a strong cast of other actors playing officials from both Britain and Tazbekistan, and the first episode revolves around Mitchell having to juggle the seemingly conflicting questions of whether to negotiate the release of a human rights activist or a lucrative arms deal with Tazbekistan for helicopters that can "pick off a rabbit from 70 miles away."

I can't say I'm massively switched on politically and thus can't really comment as to how "biting" the satire inherent in the show really was, but leaving that aside, the show itself was entertaining enough. Mitchell and Webb are always very watchable, and seeing them play characters other than Mark and Jeremy (or variations thereof) is rather pleasing. If nothing else, Ambassadors certainly shows that the duo have the capacity to be serious when it counts — and when strange things do happen, their particular brand of deadpan humour contrasts well with the sillier things going on.

I'll be interested to see how the show develops. With hour-long episodes and the addition of drama to their usual comedy, it's a lot slower-paced than Mitchell and Webb's previous work and thus it will be a good test of their abilities, and whether they can carry an interesting story as well as a series of amusing happenings. The first episode was certainly a reasonably strong start — I'm looking forward to seeing if it continues.