Peep Show

Mark and Jeremy share a flat and an astonishing ability to explain their own bad behaviour to themselves. Peep Show lets the audience hear those explanations while watching what they actually do.

The point-of-view filming and internal monologues make small encounters especially uncomfortable. David Mitchell's Mark can sound analytical while choosing something absurd; Robert Webb's Jeremy can mistake an impulse for a principle before anyone has finished speaking. Their incompatible habits do not stop them enabling each other.

It is sharply written, but deliberately unpleasant company at times. The humour depends on spending time with selfishness, anxiety and social humiliation rather than gradually discovering that everyone is lovely underneath. That style did not keep me watching through the run.

Try it if the private justifications are what you enjoy in awkward comedy. Curb Your Enthusiasm takes comparable arguments into a wealthier social world. Peep Show keeps them close to the sofa, where the two men can repeat an argument without improving either the situation or themselves.