Peep Show

Sam Bain has called Seinfeld the biggest influence on Peep Show, a show that took the sitcom apart while staying authentic; he and Jesse Armstrong trace a line from George Costanza to Mark Corrigan.

Jesse Armstrong has described Peep Show as a post-Office sitcom, taking from The Office a realism and a comedy of excruciating embarrassment that the point-of-view camera pushes further.

From a list. Sam Bain names Fawlty Towers among the British sitcoms that shaped them: a furious, snobbish man whose schemes to save face always make things worse.