Thank goodness for Peep Show. For several reasons actually - first off, there aren't very many really top notch British sit-coms at the moment, but this is one; second, as I said in my preview, it has had the guts to go way beyond two series; and third, (and most prosaically) Fridays have been rubbish for TV recently, but this, along with the return of the immovable Have I Got News For You, has made up for that.

As I also said in my preview, this series has gone back to the roots of Peep Show, and rejected an on-going storyline for those little vignettes that keep us watching through our fingers/from behind a cushion/from an adjoining room. This week though, I really did get the feeling that this was a series finale, what with a baby on the way, and Jeremy joining a cult.

He's taken a personality test at The New Wellness Centre, you see, and now he's started thinking about whether he's in a good place in his life ("Why do I even do half of the stupid shit I do?") and dealing with abandonment issues. Oh, and changing his name to Jarrod. *shudder*.

Mark's having a much better time of it, though, as he's been promoted, and "he hardly has to modify [his] behaviour at all" when he's with Dobby. He can openly play Warquest with her and everything. But, true to self-destructive form, he then has a drunken one-night stand with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, who discovers she's pregnant and whom he has to fire. Maybe not doing a *whole* lot better than Jez, then. Especially because, well you know that baby? It's Jeremy's.

That's right - things happened! Big things! Just like a proper sit-com! Yes, after a series of lunging from one embarrassing incident to another, all of the plot suddenly came crammed into the last ten minutes of the final episode. The writers even threw us a little bone in terms of Jeremy and Mark uniting to get rid of Super Hans (also indoctrinated), and plotting how to get a huge new TV with an insurance pay out: "It's payback time!"

I said in my review of the first episode of this series that I never really miss Peep Show when it's away - perhaps because, at just six episodes a series, it is all over in the blink of an eye - but that's my own little foible, and in no way a reflection on the quality of the show.

The writers do an almost unnerving job of vocalising the little thoughts we all have, but would never say out loud. And I don't even mean the sordid or horrifically selfish stuff (like Mark thinking it would be just his luck if Jeremy was killed during a robbery), but just the mundane things. I remember a scene from a couple of series back when Mark is in his office, struggling to open a draw, or something similar, and he gets incredibly irate until it finally relents and he says something along the lines of "ah it's open, it always does in the end." Isn't that just perfectly real?

In my opinion, this series has been a lot more consistent than series 4, but perhaps never quite hit the heights of that series' finale with Mark and Sophie's doomed wedding. The most notable exception is this sublime scene in the theatre, which will surely go down as one of the best ever Peep Show moments: