Peep Show: The six greatest episodes

With the final series set to start on November 11th, we recap the greatest epidosdes of the classic sitcom

Robert Webb and David Mitchell in 'Peep Show' (Angus Young)

The curtain will start falling on one of Britain's most wonderful comedies on Wednesday night as the ninth and final series of Peep Show kicks off on Channel 4.

Since 2003 we've followed the hopelessly pathetic lives of Jeremy and Mark as they fight their way through the break-ups, dreadful sex and a big leg of terrier to find them where they are now; unemployed and hopelessly in love with the same woman. Who happens to have just moved to New York.

Life isn't looking too good for the 'El Dude' brothers.

We've collated is a list of six of the greatest Peep Show episodes ever below and can only apolgise in advance for so many classics having not quite made the cut.

1. On the Pull (Series 1, episode 3): Much of Peep Show’s best comedy is founded either on: a) sexual disappointment; or b) horrendous social occasions, and this early episode, in which Jeremy and Mark go on a low-rent double date to the local bowling alley and bump into Mark’s then-office crush Sophie (Olivia Colman), employs both to vintage effect.

2. Dance Class (Series 2, episode 1): Series 2 was when the show really started hitting its stride, kicking off with this humdinger, in which Mark and Jez attend the now-notorious new-age dance group “Rainbow Rhythms”. Mark’s seizure-like flailing as he pretends to let go to the music is the perfect illustration of his forced relationship with fun.

3. Jeremy Makes It (series 2, episode 2): If Mark and Jeremy seem ill-suited as friends, then this episode proves they’re safer together than trying to bond with other men. While Jeremy is abused by someone he used to bully at school, Mark has to work out how to shake off neo-Nazi office buddy Daryl.

4. Sectioning (Series 3, episode 2): To stick our neck out, we’ll call this the best of the best: a delirious piece of farce, in which Jeremy and Super Hans are gifted a pub by the former’s unstable former university chum Merry, before Mark decides to intervene, with events coming to a head on a psychiatric ward in a bout of mutual attempted detainment.

5. Holiday (Series 4, episode 5): From sit-com to sick-com, this episode centring around Mark’s stag weekend away with Jeremy on a canal boat is superb for the way it builds to a true moment of Grand Guignol: Jeremy covering up his accidental slaughter and subsequent incineration of his canal hook-up Aurora’s dead dog by eating a “turkey drumstick” that, in fact, comes from said canine’s remains.

6. Seasonal Beatings (Series 7, episode 5): The show held back seven years before giving us a Christmas special but when it did, it was a cracker: a “festive Festen”, to quote Mark, in which he found himself contending with a contemptuous father, half-cut mother, and seriously-pissed off “friend”-cum-unacknowledged girlfriend Dobby.