Ricky Gervais’ fondness of Peep Show saved the show from cancellation in its early days.
The sitcom, which premiered in 2003, stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb as Mark Corrigan and Jeremy Usbourne, two very different, dysfunctional best friends who share a Croydon, South London flat.
While it went on to run for 12 years on Channel 4, it was cancelled early on due to a lack of support.
Looking back on the show’s legacy Script editor Iain Morris has revealed how The Office actor Ricky managed to keep the programme on the air 20 years after it first aired.
‘The channel hated it because it wasn’t rating and they didn’t really understand it,’ he said.
‘I spent a lot of time defending it, probably to the detriment of my career.’
He did, however, say Ricky was one of the show’s early backers and helped the network decide to keep it on the air.
‘He kept talking about it. Because The Office was so huge, his love for Peep Show effectively got it recommissioned,’ Iain shared in a piece for The Guardian.
Executive producer Andrew O’Connor added that the show ‘just kept being recommissioned by the skin of our teeth’.
‘It was an act of survival until it finally took off,’ he added.
A fifth American version of Peep Show was announced last year, with the show’s original creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain serving as executive producers.
The remake is said to be inspired by the original’s first-person narrative approach, but with a different scenario and two female characters.
According to Deadline, the pilot episode would ‘explore the relationship between a long-suffering secretary and her employer, an emotionally unstable tech entrepreneur’.
Previous efforts to recreate the series in the United States occurred in 2005, 2008, 2016, and 2019, respectively.
Peep Show is streaming on Channel 4.
