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The secret ingredient is crime.

—Super Hans, ""University Challenge""

University Challenge
Series 2, episode 4
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Episode details
Date aired 3 December 2004
Previous episode Local Zero
Next episode The Man Show

University Challenge is the fourth episode of series 2, and tenth overall episode of Peep Show.

Summary[]

Mark meets a salesgirl named April at a shoe store. She is versed in history, and adorably shy, so Mark comes back another day to thank her for helping him with his shoes. While there he finds out it's her day off and in fact she is at school at the University of Dartmouth, his and Jeremy's alma mater.

Jeremy finds out that Super Hans has been selected to front for Executioner's Bong, a band who just so happens to be touring through Dartmouth. Jeremy is initially proposed as the token maracas player (like Bez) but it is later revealed that Hans and Pete Preston (one of the official members were not too keen on this idea to begin with.The band is clearly dismissive of Jeremy from the start — not even letting him go in the van with them. Jeremy tags along as Mark takes a bus to Dartmouth to stalk April.

When they arrive in Dartmouth, Mark pretends to be a mature student in order to get time with April which includes attending the office hours of an ancient history course taught by the snobbish and intelligent Professor MacLeish. The professor is impressed with Mark's knowledge and invites him to a dinner party at his house that night.

Jeremy and Mark go shopping at the corner store, where Jeremy shoplifts chocolate (which Super Hans does in the beginning of the episode, inspiring Jeremy) and it results in Jeremy and Mark leaving a 10 pound note and escaping through the window when they get caught by the store owner.

Mark goes to the dinner party, while Jeremy is ejected from the band, after believing that Super Hans was fired and he would be taking his place. A security guard grabs him by his testicles and drags him out of the venue. Jeremy crashes MacLeish's dinner party and, while April is in another room, outs Mark as being a loan manager, not a student.

When April returns, Mark quickly makes up a plan to escape. The two end up at April's dorm room, where Mark is too scared to make a move, and she ends up going to sleep, believing that she has "three more years" to see Mark again.

Supporting cast[]

Uncredited performers[]

Trivia[]

  • In real life, there is no University of Dartmouth. The closest official universities to Dartmouth are the University of Plymouth and the University of Exeter.
  • The first appearance of April, played by Catherine Shepherd.
  • The "Hindley" that Jez refers to after he and Mark are detained by Mr. Rashid, are In reference to Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, notorious child-killers apprehended and convicted in the 1960s.
  • The book that Jez picks up at Professor MacLeish's dinner party is a particularly racy novel titled Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser.
  • There are a few sexual literary references hinting at the tension between April and Mark: the reference to Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser at the party and the Betty Blue poster in April's dorm room.
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