The Darkest Sitcom Episode Ever Pushes the Boundaries of Comedy

The Big Picture

• Peep Show
  immerses viewers in its characters’ unsettling thoughts and dark humor through unique camera angles.
• The episode “Holiday” is Peep Show’s darkest, showcasing uncomfortable situations and macabre humor.
• The series remains consistently dark and cringeworthy, addressing taboo topics and dysfunctional relationships.

While Peep Show is arguably one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, it is not for the faint of heart. It’s a show that puts viewers directly in the minds and perspectives of two dysfunctional, sometimes delusional, and always self-centered men: Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) and Jeremy “Jez” Usbourne (Robert Webb). Peep Show has a novel way of presenting things, with every camera angle being from the perspective of a person, usually Mark and Jez, but also including supporting characters and sometimes even background characters or extras. This is one way of immersing viewers in the minds of the characters. But it goes further regarding Mark and Jez, given their often offensive or alarming inner thoughts are heard regarding whatever they’re going through in any given episode. And, what they’re going through tends to be some level of unsettling, disgusting, or mortifying, too, given Peep Showrevels in cringe comedy and super dark humor.

On top of putting viewers in some unsettling headspaces, Peep Show also fearlessly tackles all sorts of taboo subjects throughout its nine seasons (an uncharacteristically long time for a British sitcom to stay on the air). This naturally means that for anyone who likes sitcoms with a dark sense of humor, Peep Show delivers the goods, sometimes, arguably, too effectively. Enter the episode “Holiday,” which is the penultimate episode of Peep Show’s fourth season and perhaps the one that goes the furthest into uncomfortable and macabre territory of any episode in the show’s run, which is truly saying something. Occurring within an already uneasy – in a good way – season, highlighting the main characters’ negative attributes more than ever before, and showcasing the pair reaching new lows in an unfortunately unforgettable final scene, “Holiday” is just about as dark as this extremely dark sitcom gets. In fact, it could well be a contender for the most darkly funny sitcom episode in TV history.

What’s ‘Peep Show’ About, and What Makes it So Awkward?

Essentially, Peep Show is a slice-of-life kind of show, only the slice of life viewers are watching play out is a borderline hellish one, with one of the show’s creators/writers, Sam Bain, describing the show as being about the “stubborn persistence of human suffering;” borderline existential horror, really. Another creator and lead writer on Peep Show was Jesse Armstrong, who’s probably best known nowadays for being the creator of the also very funny – and often cringe-inducing – Succession. That show was more of a dramedy, while Peep Show is more identifiable as a sitcom, with relatively few moments being played for anything approaching drama and episodes that all hovered around the half-hour mark. Some seasons had their own storylines, and there was a sense of character development (or devolution) throughout the show’s nine seasons, but the “narrative” of the show as a whole never seemed to be the most important thing. Again, it is a slice of (hellish) life.

Beyond the aforementioned presentation, Peep Show’s willingness to have its main characters constantly think horrible things and do horrible things only slightly less often is a big reason why so much of the show is so confronting. Jez is a bit of a mess of a person, being slack in a way that a teenager or possibly someone in their early 20s might get away with, but becomes far less appealing when considering the fact that he’s in his late 20s at the earliest during season 1, and ends the show at 40. Mark might be a tiny bit older (his actor, David Mitchell, is compared to Jez’s actor, Robert Webb, in real life), but acts like he’s significantly older, and therein enters an easy source of comedy: two main characters, one immature, and the other trying too hard to be mature. Jez hardly works, and Mark overworks himself. The former thinks he’s more charming to ladies than he really is, and the latter would win a gold medal if the Olympics had an event for Competitive Social Awkwardness. Disaster follows everywhere the two go, including an impromptu stag weekend in “Holiday.”

The Narrative of ‘Peep Show’s Fourth Season and “Holiday.”

So, in Peep Show’s fourth season, there’s a rapidly approaching wedding that the ever-doubtful Mark is having second thoughts about. His anxiety and tendency to overthink have been well-established by this point in the show, and it’s fitting, then, that the idea of marrying Sophie Chapman (Olivia Colman) is one he’s less sure about the closer the wedding gets, even though he was initially attracted to her. The stag party could be a nice distraction or at least a way for Mark and Jez to bond, but Mark ends up using the boating weekend as a way to desperately look for a way out of his looming marriage, planning it by thinking about getting involved with Lucy (Katy Brand), who he meets during the weekend. He’s even less attracted to her than he is to Sophie, but her father drunkenly offers him a job that would involve traveling to India, away from Sophie. This is all pretty dark but kind of par for the course when it comes to Peep Show.

Jez’s side of “Holiday” is where things get even more uncomfortable. Lucy has a sister named Aurora (Cara Horgan), whom Jez instantly wants to hook up with. He spends more time pursuing her over the weekend than he spends with Mark. He manages to charm her at least a little, but then things come crashing down when he accidentally runs over her family’s pet dog, Mummy, without her or the other family members initially realizing. Jez doesn’t let it ruin his ultimate goal but sees disposing of Mummy’s body as necessary to get Aurora focused on him again and ensure she doesn’t find out the truth, of course. And that’s where “Holiday” begins earning its reputation as one of Peep Show’s more infamous half-hours.

The Final Scene of “Holiday” Takes Things to a New Level.

Jez initially tries to hide the corpse of the dog he ran over by stuffing it inside the bin of the boat he and Mark are on, but Mark understandably objects. The pair try burning and burying as methods of disposal, but neither works. So, the partially burned remains of the dog end up stuffed into a trash bag, and Jez later has the bag in hand when he and Jez end up on the boat Aurora’s family has. Lucy and the sisters’ father, Malcolm (Tom Knight), are there, too. The conversation eventually turns to what’s in Jez’s suspicious bag, and he insists it’s turkey from a barbecue that Mark and he had earlier. The others are unconvinced, so Jez ends up demonstrating the edibility of what’s in the bag by eating meat off one of the limbs within. The deception is all rendered entirely unsuccessful when Aurora finds Mummy’s collar within Jez’s “bag of turkey,” at which point Mark and Jez are told to get off the boat, and the whole chaotic episode comes to an end.

It’s all cringe comedy at its absolute cringies and makes the also somewhat disturbing bachelor party in Succession’s “Prague” episode look like a walk in the park in comparison (Tom ate something he really shouldn’t have in that one, too – if you know, you know). It’s also hard to imagine humor getting much darker without ceasing to be humor altogether. Eating the remains of a family’s beloved pet in front of said family, all for the purpose of not ruining one’s chances of having sex…it’s wild, even for Peep Show, plain and simple. “Holiday” is fantastically executed as far as dark comedy goes and, for better or worse, a memorable episode, but any fan of the show who’s tempted to skip over it upon rewatching the series couldn’t exactly be blamed.

Did ‘Peep Show’ Ever Come Close to Getting This Dark Again?

“Holiday” might well be as dark as Peep Show gets, but at no point do the remaining five seasons let viewers off the hook. Getting through the fifth episode of the fourth season might mean the absolute worst is over, but things stay mortifying into the fourth season finale, which sees the wedding go through in the most disastrous way possible in “Wedding.” Both Mark and Sophie are horrified by the idea of the wedding actually happening. Mark reacts with glee at the news Jez once drunkenly hooked up with Sophie (viewing it as cheating and a reason to justifiably call things off). Mark and Jez hide in the church when the ceremony is supposed to be happening and are only found out when Jez desperately has to urinate, which leaks through the roof onto the people waiting for the ceremony to start on the bottom floor. Hey, smartly written dark comedy can work with more crass toilet humor; Peep Show proves it so.

Season 5 contains the episode “Jeremy’s Mummy,” which also tackles some taboo subjects, and the dysfunctional, toxic relationship between Mark and Sophie also darkens and gets worse as the series goes on. Peep Show hardly ends well for the two main characters, either, but a good deal of their misery (perhaps not all, though) they ultimately bring upon themselves. This naturally helps keep the bleak humor funny in a similar way to other classic/somewhat misanthropic sitcoms like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. For the most concentrated burst of dark comedy in Peep Show’s history, though, one doesn’t need to look any further than “Holiday.” It’s horrifying, hilarious, and hard to forget, and represents peak bleakness, as far as sitcoms are concerned.

Peep Show can be streamed on Tubi in the U.S.

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