Peep Show

Series Similar to Peep Show

If you enjoyed Peep Show, these series share similar themes, tone, and quality. Each recommendation is scored on genre overlap, tonal match, and critical acclaim.

1. Nathan Barley

   2005 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8), hidden gem, also on Channel 4.

   Nathan Barley is 26. He is a webmaster, guerrilla filmmaker, screenwriter, DJ and in his own words, a "self-facilitating media node". He is convinced he is the epitome of urban cool and therefore secretly terrified he might not be, which is why he reads Sugar Ape Magazine - his bible of cool. Dan Ashcroft writes searing columns for Sugar Ape. He's considered astonishingly cool, but only by those he despises. He is surrounded by idiots and practically worshipped by Nathan (whom he considers to be their king). He is 34. Why has he failed to move on? Claire Ashcroft, 27, is Dan's sister. Like Dan she despises "cool". Unlike Nathan she despises novelty, trash, irony and gadgets. She is furious that no one will fund her hard-hitting documentary about a choir of reformed junkies.

2. The IT Crowd

   2006 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.7), also on Channel 4.

   The comedic misadventures of Roy, Moss and their grifting supervisor Jen, a rag-tag team of IT support workers at a large corporation headed by a hotheaded yuppie.

3. Black Books

   2000 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.4), also on Channel 4.

   Black Books is a second-hand bookshop in London run by an Irishman named Bernard Black. He is probably the planet's worst-suited person to run such an establishment: he makes no effort to sell, closes at strange hours on a whim, is in a perpetual alcoholic stupor, abhors his customers (sometimes physically abusing them) and is often comatose at his desk. Help comes in the lumpy shape of Manny Bianco, a hairy, bumbling individual who (almost by osmosis) becomes Bernard's assistant. Manny is not exactly great at the job either but he is a million times better than Bernard. Next door is Fran, an anxious, frustrated woman who runs a sort of new-age shop selling the most unlikely bits of arty junk. Fran is friends with Bernard and, through him, with Manny; together the trio become embroiled in escapades that are sometimes extreme or violent or fantastically ludicrous, and always bizarre.

4. Father Ted

   1995 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.1), also on Channel 4.

   One small island off the west coast of Ireland. Three priests. One housekeeper. A bunch of nuns - and the most consistently awful weather on the planet.

5. Spaced

   1999 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, also on Channel 4.

   Surreal cult sitcom starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, with more pop culture references than you can shake a light sabre at.

6. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

   2004 · Comedy, Horror, Science-Fiction · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, hidden gem, also on Channel 4.

   Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is the brainchild of celebrated horror writer and self-styled "fabulist" Garth Marenghi, author of such genre classics as Afterbirth (a mutated placenta attacks Bristol) and Crab! ("One of the three best horror books about crabs I've ever read" - Hard Gore Magazine). Back in the 1980s, he branched out into television production, writing and starring in a series so radical, so scary and so downright crazy that when the bosses of Channel 4 saw what they had on their hands, they ran away screaming, like little girls. Only now, twenty years on and amid the worst programming drought in television history, have the station finally allowed the show on the air. Intercut with new interviews with Marenghi himself and his co-stars Dean Learner and Todd Rivers, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is perhaps the most disturbing vision of hospital life ever broadcast.

7. Toast of London

   2012 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, also on Channel 4.

   Comedy series following Steven Toast, an eccentric middle-aged actor with a chequered past who spends more time dealing with his problems off stage than performing on it.

8. I'm Alan Partridge

   1997 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile, highly rated (8.1), hidden gem.

   This classic BBC comedy comes courtesy of Steve Coogan. Alan is a fictional self-obsessed DJ who has had several TV jobs in the past (including chat show 'Knowing Me Knowing You') and has failed to bounce back from his long dead career. Each episode normally sees Alan resorting to embarrassing anecdotes, insulting someone without noticing and failing to revive his career.

9. Extras

   2005 · Comedy · ended

   Recommended for similar Comedy profile.

   Sitcom set in the world of film and TV extras, from the Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant team that dreamt up The Office.

10. The Office

    2001 · Comedy · ended

    Recommended for similar Comedy profile, hidden gem.

    A mockumentary about life in a mid-sized suboffice paper merchants in a bleak British industrial town, where manager David Brent thinks he's the coolest, funniest, and most popular boss ever. He isn't. That doesn't stop him from embarrassing himself in front of the cameras on a regular basis, whether from his political sermonizing, his stand-up 'comedy', or his incredibly unique dancing. Meanwhile, long-suffering Tim longs after Dawn the engaged receptionist and keeps himself sane by playing childish practical jokes on his insufferable, army-obsessed deskmate Gareth. Will the Slough office be closed? Will the BBC give David a game show? Will Tim and Dawn end up with each other? And more importantly, will Gareth realize what a hopeless prat he is?