TV Critics: Peep Show; Love You To Death: A Year of Domestic Violence

“The series has been wonderful, subtle in its characterisations, formally inventive, consistently funny…Peep Show now becomes history, but mainly in the sense that its place in the comedy pantheon is assured.
Andrew Billen, The Times

“And this is a lovely finale (if lovely can ever be the word to use about anything that contains Mark and Jeremy) of a wonderful final series. It’s absolutely the right decision to stop now, though, at the top, ensuring that Peep Show goes down in TV history, an era-defining sitcom.”
Sam Wollaston, The Guardian

“It’s understandable that frankly annoyingly talented creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong need to put the show behind them and move on, but it was still sad saying goodbye to the El Dude Brothers as they never stop being relevant. I kind of wish Peep Show could just continue every year until Mark and Jez die in soiled trousers from appropriately mundane illnesses.”
Christopher Hooton, The Independent

“As a finale to the saga of Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) and Jeremy Usborne (Robert Webb), this would not have been worthy. Series nine has had some superb moments; the third episode, in which Mark threw a dinner (egg and “bulkylettuce” pasta bake) for his love, April, who came unexpectedly chaperoned by her husband Angus, must count as one of the best ever. But the final episode hadn’t nearly so much going for it. For one thing, the twin jeopardies were too obviously a foregone disaster to leave any tension.”
Iona McLaren, The Telegraph

“A tough subject, sensitively handled, searing its way into our memories.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express

“Love You to Death was an important piece of TV. It offered no solutions to the problem of domestic violence and it did not judge the support available. It did, however, highlight the problem, force the viewer to acknowledge it and offer a mouthpiece to those affected by it. It may be too late for those 86 women killed in 2013 but perhaps this can act as a catalyst to help us all ensure that number is drastically reduced in 2016.”
Amy Burns, The Independent

“Whereas most documentaries are guided by an omniscient, invisible narrator, with the occasional talking head, no experts are called in to shape the material in Engle’s unnarrated films. The voices in Love You to Death were those of ordinary people, on their sofas, speaking frankly, fumbling for words, weeping – even laughing. You rarely heard Engle’s questions and never glimpsed her face. If this film felt more elegiac, more beautifully photographed with a richer palette than Engle’s earlier work, it was because she had chosen to make a monument.”
Iona McLaren, The Telegraph