Your next box set: Peep Show

I'd never watched a single moment of Peep Show until last month. I'd filed it in the E4 crud bin, along with Hollyoaks, every Big Brother spin-off and Skins. Then, in an idle moment, I cued up the first episode on Channel 4's video-on-demand.

Blimey. Having now watched all six series – that's 900 minutes in three weeks – I can now see that Peep Show does indeed deserve the plaudits. The set-up is simple: one flat, two men, a giant TV, and copious amounts of voiceover allowing you into their interior world. What's beautiful about it is that the men are both dorks, albeit in completely different ways: Mark (David Mitchell) is a neurotic, besuited salaryman struggling to stay normal; Jez (Robert Webb) is a synth-twiddling wannabe muso who, despite a fair amount of success with women, cannot disguise his inner berk.

The result is a comedy of embarrassment to rival even Curb Your Enthusiasm. I lost count of the amount of times I was forced to avert my eyes from some cringe-inducing scene. And it's shamelessly repellent: I still can't believe that Jez's voiceover about when he'll tell his date he killed her pet dog was ever broadcast on TV.

What gives the show its distinctive flavour is its combination of delicacy and grossness. When you watch the lot in one go, you can see the ebb and flow. In the first series, Jez's love life is to the fore, as he tries to score with neighbour Toni but ends up with free-love hippie Nancy. There's a chopped-up, episodic feel that gives the nastiness more traction. Series two and three, on the other hand, see the rise of the Mark and Sophie will-they-won't-they thing, which turns things more fuzzy-hearted, although it's a long way from Friends.

And then there's the mean-spirited brilliance of series four's final episode, when Mark's nuptials go spectacularly wrong. As for those close-up, nastily lit point-of-view shots, they make the bedroom action alarmingly raw. It really is too close for comfort. Andrew Pulver