Weird Britannia: Peep Show and the absence of romance

“I spend all my time thinking about it. I’m obsessed by it.”

If the words of Mark Corrigan are anything to go by, then romance, or the idea of romance is foundational to Peep Show. Yes, there are certainly other aspects to the show, primarily the dysfunctional friendship between Mark and Jez. However, it’s not as if their romantic pursuits still don’t run right the way through the series, from episode one to the finale, like a stick of Brighton Rock.

Though they may have their differences, both characters continuously chase this sense of attachment, albeit in their own ways. What matters most, however, is the profound lack of any sense of romantic attainment for either of the two.

If Peep Show is nothing but a darkly comic series of disappointments, then the romantic lives of Mark and Jez are part and parcel of this; the series’ bleakest joke, and the one that rings so true, is the failure of romance to materialise in our modern society.

Mark’s ‘One’

The concept of ‘the one’ is seemingly timeless. It appears in Shakespeare, Medieval courtly romance, and was especially prominent in the Victorian age, even if they were only reviving earlier ideals. Since then, these ideals have only been revived again and again.

Romance has shifted from the fancies of an aristocratic class to a universal populist concept, one that decades of cultural reinforcement has taught us to expect. It’s hard not to see this reinforcement as something manufactured.

For Mark, who puts so much faith in the system, finding ‘the one’ becomes an obsession. Nevertheless, his many prospective ‘ones’, Sophie, Saz, and Callie, are only really suited to him in that they provide some hope of a ‘normal’ life, consisting of the stability and happiness he believes will come.

Meanwhile, it’s clearly apparent that Mark’s ‘one’ was always Dobby, “Weird, geeky Dobby” who he “barely has to modify [his] behaviour around […] at all”. In a conventional sense, she’s perfect. Or she would be if things were different.

In actuality, though, actual love is something that Mark cannot face. As Dobby tells him, “You don’t want to be happy. It makes you worried cause you think it’ll end and you’ll be more miserable.” Seemingly, ‘the one’ is just a promise, and the promise is better, and indeed safer, than reality.

Jeremy’s Girls

Jez, by contrast, is in some ways less outwardly romantic than Mark. In series four, episode two, in a pastiche of the film Indecent Proposal, Jeremy is offered £530 by Mark’s boss Johnson for him to sleep with his girlfriend, Big Suze. A cash-strapped Jeremy willingly accepts, although he later regrets it.

It’s the epitome of a purely transactional view of relationships, as opposed to Mark’s belief in romantic attachment. Romance becomes trivial, nothing more than a word.

Yet, at times, Jez is naively romantic, even more so than Mark. For instance, it’s he, not Mark, who first gets married. Granted, it’s for visa reasons, but for Jez, it appears to be real: he has a stag do, a best man (two technically), and he seems to revel in the entire wedding. When Mark and Super Hans suggest to him that his fiancée Nancy was unfaithful, he breaks down in tears. Nancy, on the other hand, treats the wedding as a sham and isn’t even present for half of it.

Later also, in series six, it’s he and not Mark who confesses to having a ‘soulmate’. Mark’s response is quite revealing: “It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that out of the three billion adult women in the world, your one true soulmate happens conveniently to live in the same block of flats as you”.

 “Do you have to live quite so relentlessly in the real world?”: one of Jeremy’s most common complaints about Mark.

Jez knows he’s delusional and carries on anyway. Mark concurrently believes in his delusions but is self-aware enough to half-recognise them. Neither, though, is entirely sure of any concrete existence of ‘the one’; it’s just a fantasy, and in essence they prove themselves right.

The Real World

In a moment of surprising clarity, after confessing his love to Sophie in series one, Mark professes to Jez, in one of his more notable speeches across the series: “Listen … nothing you want is ever gonna happen. That’s the real world.”

It’s an interesting take, not least because it’s Mark’s attempt to prevent Jeremy from pyramid selling, but because it poses an inherent contradiction in his entire philosophy: Mark desperately believes that the system can guarantee happiness, that if he follows the rules, does everything right, and finds ‘the one’, he’s set.

Still, unknowingly, he admits that his desires are ultimately unattainable, and in turn, the contrast between the romantic ideas sold to us and the harsh reality is laid bare.

The romanticism of Peep Show, or as it turns out the lack thereof, is therefore paradoxical. The disconnect between fantasy and reality, for both Mark and Jez, isn’t emblematic of the existence of romance but is demonstrative of how abstract it is: a promise and an expectation that never quite materialises.

And so, when it comes to the ‘real world’, it makes you wonder if romance exists at all. Or, rather disappointingly, if it’s just another narrative that we’re powerless against.

Welcome to the real world … Yeah, you keep saying that.