A discussion and overview of a rather unknown and rarely discussed Peep Show script, initially titled "Mark and Sophie in Paris", that was never put into production.
@@k-leb4671 There are a few things like that which slip through, especially in later episodes [in 'the love bunker' Jez says 'Super Hans has a website' even though he burnt the band two episodes prior]. The script supervisor should have picked up lines that are now redundant but obviously misses some.
@@syncops834 They only are in the same room in 'Shrooming' and yet don't share any lines together [similar to how Dobby and Sophie never really talk outside the time Mark+ Dobby find her in the toilet!].
Very interesting. On one hand I thought the exact same thing, it’s much more fitting for Mark to stay in England highlighting how unadventurous and English he is. On the other hand, there is a certain level of “normal person” about going to Paris isn’t there. We know Mark is an absolute weirdo deep down but surface wise? The white elephant, big TV, own apartment, quite successful in his own right. I’m happy they stayed with the Quantocks but I do think that going to Paris could have worked to show how Mark aims to appear more civilised than he actually is
On one hand I would kill to see an interaction between them almost as two extremes of Jez for Hans and Mark for Johnson. On the other, it adds to how real life is and how you know a bunch of people but they may not know each other. Even the way some characters depart the show with no big goodbye, just mostly losing touch and moving on with life.
A bit of an aside here but; the whole idea that hans and Johnson don't meet up ever in the series is personally brilliant really. It matches up with the real life concept of 'theres people you might know really well but they dont know each other at all', you know, part of the tangled web of mates, dates/shags, strangers, partners, enemys and acquaintances that everyone has. A lot (too many personally) of tv programs and films have people meet up/bump into people that they probably wouldn't ever irl, even if they had mutuals, just for the sake of ONLY unnecessary drama and/or the fans/viewers demands. Films/TV doesn't always have to be down to the letter real and logical (and a lot of supposedly slice of life based programs often falter at this.. I'm looking at you soaps and reality tv) but it's when it's not done for artistic reasons or as a shameless flight of fancy or because it would make a really interesting plot point it just doesn't hold up to the test of time usually.... But anyway I'll get off my soapbox and end my stream of consciousness here.
What about when JLB go bust, and super hans is the security guard and steffan strous and Alan turn up then? Someone must have had to hire superhans to do it, and I imagine it would be alan
@@ldwp6395 To be pedantic, Hans was hired by his 'contact' to shift the stuff out of the office in his role as a 'white van man' ['we're just vanning their shit out. I might give my contact a bell. See what bits of the JLB corpse there are to chow down on']. He didn't want the raiding party to come in as it would look bad on him ['Look honey, you need to make your protest through the agreed grievance procedure' Love how Hans is professional when he wants to be!], so he wasn't technically working for Johnston though it does look like that.
I hope that one day they’ll be able to resurrect these episodes, recreating them with the same mid-2000s camera quality while digitally de-aging all the characters. It would be amazing. If they can do it with the likes of Will Smith in shitty reboots of science fiction films, why not something decent like Peep Show?
Co-writer Sam Bain did an interview recently with podcast secrets of the pharaohs and said, in addition to the 'phantom' series 3 with Toni+Nancy, they wanted to bring Toni back at some point. One of the suggestions was for her to fill the role of Callie in 'Jeremy's Big Break' or possibly come to Jez's party in the finale, but nothing materialized. Shame as I loved the character and she's highly quotable ['you can be as loud as you like...]. The British comedy guide's character list for Peep Show oddly for a time described Toni as appearing in Series 1-2 & 4-6 for some reason. If only...
A lot of the criticisms about these scripts being too 'vulgar' or 'dark' dont really hold up considering the amount of dark and vulgar moments that happen throughout the 9 series.
agreed, these abandoned plots doesn't even compare to mark being raped or jeremy eating a half cooked pet dog (examples off the top of my head, i've probably missed other horrific things lmao)
@@jamesreeve606 Wasn't as good but S9 is still absolutely fucking hilarious lol, especially Mark re-connecting with Aprile and his improvised Moroccan dinner 😭
Going off the second draft, could it be the case that "Sectioning" was written with Toni in mind, rather than a previously unmentioned new character who somehow also has a history with Mark & Jez? It would make sense if she was intended to play a big part in Season 3.
Man it sucks that Elizabeth Marmur couldn't continue on the show. It seemed like the writers had big plans for her, and Toni was such a fun character to watch.
@@k-leb4671 I wish I could like Toni but I feel like we never got enough of her and often times she fell flat for me. If Elizabeth stayed I'm sure I would've been able to see Toni on the same level as other cast members like Big Suze or Nancy
Interesting, because some of those ideas actually do come back again. There is an episode where Johnson relapses briefly, and another one where Mark thinks he’s gone mad, plus, Toni was replaced by big Suze and she and Johnson end up together eventually.
@@FortoFight Yeah but it's too sudden, maybe not. Peep show makes you fill in the gaps yourself but I had forgotten about that episode when I first watched the serious so it felt strange
@@FortoFight I swear theres nothing indicating towards Johnson having a problem with alcohol in between Mark and Johnson having pints talking about Sophie and Mark getting wrongly outed as an alcoholic and being forced to go to AA.
Strange that she's called Merry. The doctor calls her Mary in Sectioning and it makes sense as little joke. M+J have been calling her the wrong name all the time they've known her because in her accent Mary sounds like Merry.
The whole "Johnson being suicidal and ends up in hospital after an overdose" sounds so unlike Peep Show, but then I remember there was a scene with Mark finding Jez on the floor with pills in his hand, assuming Jez tried overdosing, which led to Jez being rushed to hospital with a tube being shoved down his throat, though he was perfectly fine.
@@jameswhee That's what I mean, like it sounds like they reworked the Johnson plot into Jeremy and changed it from an actual suicide attempt, into a severe misunderstanding. But on paper, it sounds exactly the same: character "overdoses", suicidal themes, ends up getting rushed to hospital.
Yeah a botched suicide attempt wouldn't be tonally dissonant for Peep Show at all in my opinion. Think of all the dark subjects they've touched on over the years - cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction, mugging, knife crime, sexual coercion, violence towards animals. Peep Show is pretty fucking grim when you really look at it.
@@shearman360 You'd be surprised, usually loads of ideas get shelved during the writing process and re-introduced and reworked for later shows/movies/games etc.
The paintballing in a go-kart bit is referenced in Season 2, Episode 6, at Jeremy's stag-do in the pub, where he says "Who needs to go off to Amsterdam paintballing in a go-kart? You know? That is such bullshit. "
Merry is short for Meredith, which also happens to be the name of the actress who plays Merry. Presumably it's less that they had an idea for a character named Merry, and more that they wanted to write a role for Meredith MacNeill the actress.
Kinda seems like this episode was made of bits eventually used everywhere else in the series. Stag do in which the host is trying to be Sober? Hans' Stag Do Someone apparently being so depressed as to have an overdose? Jeremy on Mark and Sophie's getaway in the earlier season (Except he didn't really overdose in that episode) The expensive wine? Jeremy and Big Suze' date (as mentioned in this vid) Jeremy being filmed doing sex stuff? Happened in Season 9, just for a different reason Woman being mental and needing help? Sectioning
it's not the depressing nature of episode that sounds tonally off (anyone who's watched peep show stoned knows it's REALLY sad), it's just the way in which SO much is going on. it sounds like a series finale of Russell t Davies era Doctor who
one of my most distressing stoned moments was getting into a 4-star police chase around franklin's neighbourhood on GTA 5 and feeling like i'd really let the community down and brought shame on my family
I don’t know why but “secret Twix” is so much funnier than “secret Curly Wurly”. You can just imagine Sam and Jesse day around listing chocolate brands to see which one sounded the best, that’s what makes the show so fantastic
"Secret Curly Wurly" requires you to avoid thinking of an easily contrived sexual innuendo, whereas Twix sounds serious as if it's cod Shakespearean (betwixt) and therefore slightly pretentious and absurd in the context. It also suits Mark.
Canadian merry ( Merideth McNeil) is a known Canadian tv Comedian ( the Baroness Von Sketch Show) and I assume the Merry roll was specifically written for her ? ( She actually lives down the street from me in Toronto))
Toni as a matter of fact “I’m having a good time, okay?!” type and Superhans, when he’s being weirdly sensible, would have made for some great scenes. It would have fit with Hans’ scenes where he always has a new job
"Mark gets tricked into spending £150 on a bottle of wine" I laughed a lot just imagining some of these scenes, credit to the writers and your delivery (and thc).
I'm not sure if you are a fan of That Mitchell and Webb look but there is a lost pilot episode from 2003 that was filmed around the same time the radio show had started.
Glad they didn't kill Johnson but they did kill Gerard. Still though, goes to show how the comedy comes from the characters and the acting, moreso than the episode plots.
I hope that one day they’ll be able to resurrect these episodes, recreating them with the same mid-2000s camera quality while digitally de-aging all the characters. It would be amazing. If they can do it with the likes of Will Smith in shitty reboots of science fiction films, why not something decent like Peep Show?
I did have a read of the 'in Paris' version of the script and while I agree it wouldn't have worked as an episode [killing off Johnston would have been a mistake for sure] there were some gems in the script which we sadly didn't get to see: *Johnston saying everyone at the stag was an ex of Toni except for Mark [which he laughs at the idea!] *Toni saying her holiday was cancelled because 'a plane crashed into the resort, everyone was killed...why do these things keep happening to me!' * The script I read had Toni joining Nancy and Jez on there fake honeymoon [awkward!] and Toni recounting to Nancy about her sleeping with Jez in 'on the pull' [more awkward!].
I do find it interesting that there is two 'un-filmed' series 3's. One with Nancy and the 'Toni+ Johnson' plot, and another version which seems closer to the actual series [with Nancy absent and Big Suze present] but still with Toni. It's interesting how the Merry character seems to have been moved to 'sectioning' to replace Toni [Confetti came out after series 3 but if it was filmed before, maybe Robert Webb and or Olivia Colman recommended her]. It'll probably never happen but it would be nice to see some of the other 'un filmed scripts' one day [Sam Bain said 'Jeremy's Big Break was supposed to have Toni in the Callie part originally for example].
Came across that series by accident a few months ago and really enjoyed it, but they were basically playing a variation of Mark and Jez, David Mitchell's character's inner monologues were identical to Mark's
I watched the movie 'the beach' the Leo Di caprio one, the other day. I literally jumped up and pointed at the TV! 'That's Johnson!!!' Also I have seen him presenting some Christian hymn program. I think it was anyway. If not then this moreish crack has got a hold on me.
The producer at the time, who also helped out with the scripts, was Robert Popper who went on to write 'Friday Night Dinner' and contribute to 'Stath Let's Flats'. Another script editor was Ian Morris pre-Inbetweeers.
I don't know the early episodes of Dobby hell yeah Nancy and big Suze hard to choose from them, i think with Suze she's more settled in what won't go to a pub in a say to get pissed enjoys watching Antiques Roadshow. Dobby would go rockin take no shit from anyone n Nancy well she is a jesus freak but fucking sexy hard to pick 1 n that's not talking elaina can't spell lol fit but a user
Maybe in another region of the multiverse this was made,when one of the chief critics of the first draft broke his tooth on a biscuit and had to go to the dentist to get it crowned, leading to his non attendance at the meeting,and the vote going the other way. The resultant poor outcome then leads to the cancellation of the show ( an ever present threat) to be replaced by Jimmy Carr . Jesus.
It sounds more like a sad drama. glad they didn't do it that way. I would have had to put on my cry-pants and got a big box of tissues, thank heck for that guys.
Interesting thing about the Toni-Johnson relationship. I think they had this in mind by the series 2 finale as in the last Toni scene, she starts talking really like Johnson and it’s a bit weird.
11:50 "And Hans tells him not to 'spunk it up the wall,' to which Jez is shocked at. That would've been a really good joke here." Wait, I don't get the joke at all. Why would it have been really good?
Johnson and Toni in a marriage? Sounds like something that would either end in bloodbath or might actually work out really well. But I agree that the whole Jez-and-Johnson as mates thing, and the love triangle Jez-Nancy-Toni would probably have turned "Peep Show" into a slightly edgier version of "Coupling". It really worked better with Jez basically having a new love interest in every series.
I could never stand Toni. Perhaps that’s the point; someone as jarring as her still seen as potentially being “the one” (as is the case with basically every woman they speak to). But I found her particularly hard to take...
Sorry to say ths but - I watched all of Peep Show and I found it funny and well written BUT - It also made me feel relly depressed - Non of the characters are nice and they are all fckign each other over. They all seem desperate and lonely.
