Jeremy's Mummy
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| Peep Show episode | |
| "Jeremy's Mummy" | |
| Episode No | 5x03 |
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| Airdate | May 23, 2008 |
| Writer(s) | Simon Blackwell |
| Director | Becky Martin |
| Guest star(s) | Tessa Wyatt as Jackie (Jez's Mum) Tom Chadbon as Martin Ingrid Oliver as Natalie |
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Peep Show Season 5 |
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| All Peep Show episodes | |
"Jeremy's Mummy" is the 28th episode of British TV comedy series Peep Show.
[edit] Synopsis
Jez's great aunt Gwen dies, leaving Jez an inheritance of £20,000 and another £20,000 to his mother. While searching through Gwen belongings, Jez finds a 'war gun' which he decides to keep it for himself, Mark later names the Webley revolver 'Gunny the Gun'. Jez's mother Jackie comes to visit in order to attend the funeral and comes with her new boyfriend Martin, a military man that Jez hates but Mark respects greatly. Martin offers Mark the chance to write his memoirs, which he accepts. Meanwhile, Jez's mother reveals that she is keeping nearly all the money for herself so that she and Martin can buy a holiday home in Corfu, resulting in Jez having no money whatsoever, expect that which Mark gives him. Mark interviews Martin's daughter Natalie in order to get a better idea of Martin. During the middle of the night, she has sex with Mark and refuses to stop after he asks her to do so. The next morning, Jez and Super Hans tell Mark that he was actually raped, but Mark refuses to believe it. Jez attempts to stop Martin going to Corfu by planting the gun in his luggage, but he is spotted before he can do so. In a last attempt to stop them, Jez talks about the rape, which result in not only them leaving but also in Mark losing the chance to write the memoirs.[1][2]
[edit] Theme of violence
In this episode, an undercurrent of violence is ever present, from war to crime, the programme is rife with its allusions. Martin, a Scots Guardsman, sets the tenor by relating his exploits in the Falklands War and Malaysia. The military is a family affair as his daughter, Natalie, is a member of the Army Catering Corps even though she angered her father by wearing a CND badge. Mark, excited by this exposure to the military, tries to prove his history bona fides by bragging about his collection of books written by the military historian Antony Beevor but is slapped down by Martin's characterization of them as lightweight. Nonetheless, Mark is still offered a chance to write the soldier's wartime memoirs.
Jez gets into the military swing of things by zeroing in on Martin's background, and mockingly asking him if he is going to The Hague for war crimes. Both Mark and Jez use the epithets of dictators and murderers to describe themselves and others: Iron Chancellor, Stalin and O.J. Simpson. Mark goes as far as to accuse Jez of treating his mom and Martin as Hamlet treated his mother and the murderous King.
The show glides down from the lofty regions of war, dictators and regicide to the everyday violence of crime. Mark and Jez irresponsibly wave about a real handgun (unbeknownst to them, deactivated), an illicit thrill partly due to the fact that gun ownership is strictly controlled. Jez wants to sell the gun to the yardies, even hire them to kill Martin. Violent references continue with the supposed rape of Mark described as something from a Mike Leigh film. The only note of law and order, the Taggart detective programme, is tossed in to indicate Mark's ineffectual attempt to disarm Jez.
All of these darker topics are leavened as always with the show's sardonic humor and uncomfortable moments that are its hallmarks. Mark's respect for Martin comes out when he aptly observes that he is a cross between Paddy Ashdown and Indiana Jones. He compares Jez and his mother to, respectively, items from John Lewis, an upscale store, and Nuts magazine, a lesser source. Jez, approaching the tripping Super Hans, said that "chatting shit with your mates is still free -- You can't tax that, Brown." At dinner, after Jackie referred to Jonathan Dimbleby, Mark, thinking of Jonathon's brother, the newsman David Dimbleby, whimsically proposed that there is probably a third hidden brother named Gummo Dimbleby, referring to Gummo Marx of the Marx brothers, an exemplar of a little-known sibling. Jez is desperately running around trying to get his hands on his dead aunt's inheritance. The levity lifts this theme up to where the darker elements are barely noticed even though, in the end, again, neither protagonist gets what they want.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Episode 5.4. British Comedy Guide. Retrieved on 2008-05-16.
- ^ Jeremy's Mummy. Channel 4. Retrieved on 2008-05-24.
