TV Characters = Horrible People

I realised that it has been a while since I wrote any sort of list blog, in fact I don’t think I have ever done that in this blog, to be honest I can’t be asked to scroll through all the old ones to double check. Anyways, seeing as I spend a lot of time on www.cracked.com  I thought I would basically steal the format of their website and write a themed list.

In the process of writing this blog I realised that if I were to do the list all in one go it would amount to around 4000 words, which is simply too long and so I will instead do one a day.  The topic for this particular list shall be TV shows in which the characters are genuinely horrible people. Now the shows I have chosen all happen to be comedies and as such the characters are exaggerated for comic effect, but I am going to plead with you dear reader to ignore that fact. The list will be ranty, and you may be thinking I am being fussy and feel the need to constantly remind me that they are TV shows, but you must realise that I am totally aware of these facts. I am simply writing as if these are real people and not fictional characters This list contains 3 different shows, so my eager fans will not have to wait very long to find out number one, that is if I don’t forget to write the next two of course

NUMBER 3 – PEEP SHOW

First up I have gone with what is perhaps one of the greatest British comedies ever made, Peep Show. Written by Jess Armstrong and Sam Bain, with additional material from the shows stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb Peep Show is one of the most innovative shows on television. It has managed to repopularise the use of point of view camera shots as well as frequently using the internal monologues of the shows two main characters Mark Corrigan (Mitchell) and Jeremy ‘Jez’ Osbourne (Webb).

It would appear then that I am quite a big fan of the show and would seemingly have no reason to criticise it. Well that is half right, I love the show and have no problem with the way it’s written etc., but the fact remains that a large number of the characters really are quite horrible people.

Let’s start with Mark shall we. A large portion of the series centres around Mark’s on/off relationship with co-worker Sophie Chapman (Olivia Coleman) despite spending the first 3 series or so chasing after her and going to ridiculous lengths to impress her, one of which included reading her personal emails, Mark soon grows tired of her and goes to quite absurd lengths to sabotage the relationship he once so craved. These attempts include planning a move to India without informing her, attempting to start an affair with an old school crush (though to his credit he does back out of this), as well as numerous attempts to avoid spending time with her.

It is one of these attempts that really does show Mark up to be a person with questionable morals. In season 4 Mark and Sophie are engaged to be wed. Now obviously marriage is a big step and Mark is understandably apprehensive, however rather than simply talk to his fiancé he instead joins a local gym so that he can avoid spending time with her on the pretence that he is instead working out. During one of his sessions with his personal trainer Mark lets on that he is unsure about the wedding and is thinking about backing out. Said personal trainer then advises him to end the relationship rather than enter an unhappy marriage, perfectly sage advice there. However when Sophie intimates that she would like to spend more time with Mark and may join his gym to achieve this, Mark realises that he has dug himself into a particularly large hole and comes up with a plan. Encouraged by his best friend and flat mate Jeremy (more on him later) Mark decides to get his personal trainer sacked by telling the gym’s manager that he took a dump in the pool (actually performed by Jeremy). However when this plan does not quite work, Mark is encouraged to say that in fact the personal trainer sexually assaulted him during a sports massage, resulting in his termination from the job.

Now, whilst Mark never initially planned for this to happen and it was largely with Jeremy’s encouragement, it would still have been much easier to simply talk to Sophie, rather than ruin an innocent man’s life. To top it off, Mark isn’t exactly ravaged with guilt about what he does, he instead is glad that he has gotten away with it and the only time he actually expresses remorse is when he runs into his former trainer at a karate class who happens to be a black belt intent on kicking the shit out of him, and even then he uses Sophie as a human shield.

The fact is that had this happened in real life, Mark could very easily have gone to prison for lying about such a serious issue. What he did was cowardly and could so easily have been avoided if he had actually had the courage to talk to the woman he at least pretends to love. However as this is TV nothing more is made of it and Mark gets away with it Scott free.

Speaking of Scott free, it is about time we talked about Mark’s best friend Jeremy. Yes whilst Mark is a person who has done horrible things, he is pretty hard to hate because he is one of life’s unlucky ones. Whereas Jeremy lives a life where very few of his actions appear to have serious consequences. Despite his lack of charm and intelligence he has remarkable luck with women and not just ordinary women, some of them are so remarkably beautiful its offensive, I am thinking in particular of Nancy (Rachel Blanchard) and Big Suze (Sophie Winkleman).  Jeremy could be described as a dreamer, describing himself as a musician he very rarely has a sustainable job, however when he has managed to find work throughout the series, it has more often than not involved good sums of money for very little work, though one of these jobs did involve wanking off a famous DJ, but still £500 a week!

A particular point of contention between Jez and Mark is the fact that Jeremy very rarely pays his way and basically scrounges off Mark as he is simply more weak willed an unwilling to chuck his friend out for any bearable amount of time. Jeremy however feels absolutely now guilt about this and openly exploits Mark in order to live his life to the fullest often at Mark’s expense.  The best way to describe him would be a total free loader.

Now many of Jeremy’s worst incidents revolve around women, including the time he tried to get Big Suze to have sex with Mark’s boss for a large sum of money. However one of the worst aspects of his character as I have already mentioned is the fact that he is constantly handed the easy option. In season 5, a wealthy relative of Jeremy’s dies and he inherits £20,000 much to his understandable delight. However things soon go awry when his mother cuts this amount to £10,000 so that she can use the money to buy herself and her new boyfriend a villa abroad. Now ten thousand pounds is a lot to lose, but it is also a lot to gain, but Jeremy makes one hell of a fuss when the money that he has in no way earned is cut by his own mother. Even when she comes to visit and reason with him, Jeremy treats his mother like a complete piece of shit as well as her new boyfriend who doesn’t approve of his layabout lifestyle. When it is decided that Jez’s mum will in fact keep all of the money he decides to take drastic measures. Whilst cleaning out the belongings of his now deceased aunt, Jeremy finds an old World War Two pistol (or as Super Hans(Matt King) describes it ‘a war gun’), that he decides to keep as a souvenir. Upon deciding that he really does deserve some of the inheritance he devises a plan to slip the gun into his mum’s boyfriend’s luggage before the go away on holiday. Fortunately Mark discovers the plot and puts a stop to it. Upon realising that he really has blown any chance of getting the money, Jez then reveals to the boyfriend that his daughter sexually assaulted Mark (they both got drunk one night and Mark awoke to her screwing him). This causes Mark to lose the opportunity to write the boyfriends memoirs, something which he was extremely excited about, it also means he has completely alienated his mother and her new boyfriend in one fell swoop.

So not only did Jeremy attempt to have his mother and her boyfriend arrested for weapon smuggling, but when his best friend, the man is basically responsible for him being alive tries to help, he ruins his life as well. Jeremy reveals himself to be spiteful, spoiled an immature in this instance and comes across as really quite a nasty person.

There are of course other characters in the show, all of whom have their moments of being nasty, in particular Jeff (Neil Fitzmaurice) who is easily the most unlikable character on the show. There is also Mark’s boss Allan Johnson (Paterson Johnson) who is extremely arrogant and borderline crazy.

So there we have it, my first entry to this list. I will reiterate what I said at the start about thinking of these characters as real people for the purpose of this blog and to remember that I am really not that judgemental of TV characters because I am fully aware that they have been written like that to be funny, and they are extremely funny. Also even though Mark and Jeremy have done some horrible things, I still like them and the show wouldn’t be half as good without them the way they are.