I tend to like 2000s shows because it was the last era before the internet completely dominated all aspects of culture. You might get one or two episodes based around it, but it wasn’t as omnipresent as it became past 2010.
Cannot stand when a show is focused around message threads on a phone. Just completely loses the momentum of a show because there's no chance of any dialogue when the screen is full of text messages
the soundtrack is simply perfect. the boyish, youthful and almost mischievous charm of it keeps the show feeling so much more engaging/ nostalgic upon every re-watch.
I feel like that was the charm of the show, it's like the producers had a really great idea as to the types of music that would appeal to teenagers and the sort of music that the Inbetweeners themselves would listen to from that era, and it worked brilliantly. Bands/artists such as Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, The Kooks, The Libertines, Razorlight, Sugababes, Leona Lewis, The Feeling, The Fratellis, Rihanna and Girls Aloud felt very relevant for the show.
The theme song, if you listen to the actual song, 'gone up in flames' has perfect lyrics to describe the show "Its all he's ever wanted Its gone up in flames And all he's ever wanted Could never stay the same And all he's ever wanted Its gone up in flames And all he's ever wanted Can never stay the same"
I think the female dj character who seemed like a female version of Jay had a very specific purpose. Just before he met her, Jay had finally had a moment of epiphany and realised that maybe it was okay to show his vulnerabilities and not mask them behind endless bravado and lies. Then, straight after, he meets the dj and, in a rare moment where he shows some vulnerability, he's immediately rebuked by the female version of his old self whose response to this new version of Jay is to ask him "Are you bent or something?" It's a quite nicely set up and executed idea.
u might be right, and she was good for that scene and purpose. it just kinda feels like they couldve done a bit more with her, i feel like she had some wasted potential as a character
I love the parents, especially Simon's dad. The way he embarrasses Simon with his blue talk is just so funny and relatable. How many English dads aren't like that? lol
Similarly his mum being so well-meaning and genuinely trying to be nice and he constantly snaps at her was so relatable to me being a twatty teenager to my mum.
It’s just a shame that Simon’s brother didn’t get more screen time in the series. The part where he humiliates Simon for writing he loves Carly on the pavement is hilarious
@@thevfxmancolorizationvfxex4051 Great point too! The dynamic of the younger bother being so much “cooler” than his older brother leads to some funny moments. One that stand out to me is where they are drinking and Simon can’t come up with a good reply so just ends up swearing and repeating what his brother said.
@@ANiceRoach I agree. One episode could’ve focussed on Simon trying to go on a date with Carly, but he and the boys have to babysit Simon’s brother too. Naturally, things go horribly wrong. I would’ve loved to see that episode
The Inbetweeners and later Peep Show hit me in high school and even if your average Bulgarian high school is different from a UK one, these shows hit me with punches so relatable it hurt. The awkwardness, stupid ideas, not quite fitting in, but also just trying your best in an age where you feel like everyone's already got their shit together years before you I think are timeless qualities of both shows.
Surprised you didn't speak a bit more about the show ending when it did, because I always felt the show ended at the right time, as it shows with how many people loved the 3rd series but by the 2nd film people didn't like it as much because it felt like the 2nd film was made solely to cash in on the name one last time before the 4 lads grew too old to be playing the group.
They freely admitted they just did the second film to cash in [and given it made $88 million, who can blame them!]. I'm sure they got offers to do a 3rd film [especially as the second film made the lower but still great $64 million] but they wisely called it a day [as you say, they were borderline too old by then]. I think there was a bit of 'hype backlash' as the show was everywhere for a while.
It'd be interesting to see one of these for Friday Night Dinner. My friend group is essentaially split down the middle between love and hate for the show (I'm in the former). I like the Inbetweeners but I wish it had leant heavier on the drama and character stuff and less on the gross-out setpieces. Its slice of life moments are so much better than the cartoonish Lad antics to me.
Friday night dinner is an interesting one, initially I disliked it, as a silly lighter version of the inbetweeners with less hard hitting, offensive comedy. However once COVID came along and I could no longer attend family dinners the show really hit different...
I was in secondary school when it started airing too. I was the only person who was watching it at first, but by series 3 EVERYONE at school was tuning into it. I'm a trendsetter.
simon could very easily have been the most boring by far of the main cast but joe thomas plays him so brilliantly - those occasional outbursts of totally immature hormonal rage are painfully realistic. interesting how in fresh meat he was cast as very much a simon 2.0 "straight man" for the first series before jesse armstrong and sam bain clearly realised they could do so much more with his character as a sickeningly neurotic weirdo trying to present himself as a laidback hipster. i'd love to see you talk about fresh meat on this channel, seems a pretty logical followup to all your peep show content
Disagree with your point about the other school kids. The show had 18 episodes of about 26 minutes each. This is not enough time to develop the main 4, as well as other school kids. If anything, it makes the feeling that the 4 are very unpopular more believable. We're supposed to believe that they only really have eachother, and are overlooked by every other student. If they were constantly having interactions with other students, this feeling would be weakened.
This show was brilliant because it emulated how teenage boys talk to each other. In a derogatory way that would make anyone overhearing question if they are friends or enemys.
An un broadcast/released pilot was filmed in 2006 called 'Baggy Trousers' which was set in the 80's. Though many things [including the cast as only James Buckley was retained] were changed, the most significant was the time period. Period filming was going to be too expensive and the writers realized that most of there childhood stories could work in the present day so they gave it a contemporary setting.
There are better written comedies, though it’s well written, and there are more funny comedies, though it’s very funny. What makes the show so good is how amazingly relatable it is. Watching when you’re older you get nostalgic about your school years.
Absolutely nailed this review, totally agree with your summary. The show will always have a special place in my heart even if I don’t intend to revisit it very often
Joe Thomas’s character Simon I find to be funny because he does have a sense of entitlement, appears delusional and appears to have a lot of anger issues which made him pretty interesting.
I rewatched the series recently and whilst I didn’t find it anywhere nearly as funny as I did when I was in highschool I still really like it for what it is and I think it’s almost a right of passage to watch when you’re younger. It really captures growing up through the education system in England. We all knew people like a Will, a Simon, a Jay, a Neil and even the rest of the supporting cast. Also the fact there was a Green Day poster in the common room gave me a big smile as a kid 🤣🤣🤣
I think that's the problem aha, Inbetweeners as a show doesn't age that well when you get older. I remember I used to watch the Inbetweeners loads during my Sixth form and Uni days, seeing it as the best sitcom ever and since finishing both, I felt as if I've grown out of the comedy. Ultimately it's down to the relatability of the show, if you can relate to it a lot you'll find it amazing to watch, but once you enter adulthood/world of work you start to realise that a lot of the jokes are now immature. Nevertheless, I still rate the sitcom highly and even though I don't find it as funny as before in my late teens/early 20's, it's still one of the best British sitcoms for its generation.
I always felt that the second Inbetweeners film would've been better if it was about the four guys in university with their girlfriends studying the cast of the American remake who would've been foreign exchange students, and trying to teach them to be more socially acceptable, with the consequence being that they end up causing one of them to get beaten up for trying to pick a fight with a guy who would've been a boyfriend to a girl they would've liked. Nothing particularly necessary to see, but something nice to watch regardless.
@@davidz3879 That is pretty much what he says. It's clear he regretted doing it [he tweeted words to the effect 'bad feeling to be hated' the day after] and implied there was little thought or planning around it [probably didn't help some viewers thought it would be a new 'in character' episode].
Despite its reputation for being crude and dumb, The Inbetweeners actually taught me some important life lessons. The Warwick episode for example, taught me the importance of communicating openly with your partner when you have sex and not hiding your anxieties. Simon did the latter and it really cost him. If he had just been honest with Tara about the way he was feeling, he would have been fine.
I was just slightly too young for the inbetweeners as I was in middle school when it came out, however even then it was still popular pretty much all throughout high school when I was there. I think it's an interesting series as when you're young you tend to see Simon and Will as annoying and uncool with Jay and Neil being the cool funny ones, however once I watched it around 19-20 I found it to be the opposite with Jay and Neil being annoying and Simon and Will being more endearing. I think there's a clever subtlety to the writing that you can't fully appreciate without the benefit of hindsight and looking back at your own high school/college years. Also I ended up not watching the inbetweeners until about late college since I had just about the worst introduction to it from the first movie which I watched at a sleepover and just didn't really get it without watching the full series, and also a lot of the lines were parroted by some really annoying kids at my school so for ages I associated it with them and didn't want to watch it because of that, same with peep show, although I eventually got over it and can fully enjoy both series.
Watching this in my early 20's I found it hilarious. Mostly because it reminded me of my own group of friends. I recently rewatched the series again and it was still enjoyable to me. And hell because of this show I discovered The Libertines, Happy you mentioned the soundtrack!
Honestly I hate people who are kind of turning their back on the Inbetweeners because they've climbed some moral high ground over time. I remember first watching it and it was extremely relatable to me then I was an inbetweener (or just after being one) that is to sat between 16 and 18 doing A levels at that point in time. The jokes are relatable. The characters in the show have heart. and the crudeness isn't crudeness for its own sake. It feels realistic. and the jokes are realisitic. and frankly they don't come a place of hate just idiocy that is common in young men.... the movies however were full of crudeness for the sake of crudeness and events that were unrelateable.
I personally find the inbetweeners still holds up quite well-mainly due to the chemistry of the actors and the characters- even though my tastes have certainly changed over the years and I don't even mind the more crude films because the chemistry and characters are still there. I used to be quite into Family Guy when I was at Uni but watching the episodes on TV now- it's just not for me anymore and that might just be the honest reaction to some to these older shows in fairness, though I can't stand the trend for a journalist to watch an episode of a well loved old sitcom' and brand it unwatchable/question if it was every funny' click bait articles which only exist to wind up the fan base.
Apparantly that was the plan [hence why Simon finally rejects Carli, the guys all leave school and get girlfriends at the end] but it was so crazy successful they felt the almost had to do a follow up [hence why the 'happy ending' was undone within the first 5 minutes of the next film].
love these videos, keep em coming! i would love to see one on the smoking room (2004), which stars robert webb. it's one of those tv shows that almost nobody has heard of and it's pretty underrated in my opinion. also i'm not sure if you've covered it before but bruiser deserves a look-in in terms of peep show adjacent content.
In regards to storytelling in the inbetweeners, I feel like the shallowness of the reoccurring plot lines fits with the setting considering when you’re 16, things just sort of happen and your bubble is very small. It’s from the perspective of 16 year old boys who don’t really speak to or know on any real level, the people who aren’t directly inside their friend group. Idk about other people but that’s how it was for me during school. You’d know of people around school but didn’t know much about them except from maybe one or two events. I think the inbetweeners portrays this very well.
God, this takes me back to the summer 13 year old me and my even younger sister somehow got let into the cinema to see the second movie. We were so obviously the youngest ones in there lol. The vulgarity, the crudeness, the second-hand cringe, and the staunch refusal to sugarcoat the unpleasantness of teenagers, was what made the inbetweeners so damn good. It felt like one of the few shows that wasn't written by people trying to romanticise being young and re-live the glory days.
I think this show is genuinely timeless. The “badly aged” jokes still work because that’s just how immature boys are at that age before most of them eventually grow out of it and become more open minded
This could have been made 5, 10, 20 or 30 years earlier. The only differences would be the cultural references, fashions, music & some slang. Had it been made a decade later, the gay & disabled jokes would have been absent from it.
Not sure about that - conservative censors could get really twitchy about sexual content a few decades ago. Probably could have worked in the 90s, though.
@@theMoporter From the 70s onwards, the sexual references shouldn't have been a problem. The only scene involving sex is Will & Charlotte's brief failed attempt, which should also have been fine.
I always felt kind of turned off by the show as a woman because it was so 'laddish' plus I feel like quite a lot of the female characters were a bit dull and underdeveloped but I came to really appreciate it watching Through the lense of the eyes of these childish and inconsiderate yet somehow loveable characters like at the end of the day it really represents how boys like that just were at the time and still are
@Gary Baldi I know it's not really the same because it's university not secondary/sixth form but I feel like fresh meat is a pretty good example of a mixed gender young people friendgroup that gets pretty balanced and developed personalites and humour for both genders plus it also features Joe Thomas and is written by none other than Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain of peep show fame
@Gary Baldi Some Girls attempted to be a female version, but failed badly. Drifters has been described as a 20s, female version of The Inbetweeners, but it was almost ignored despite being hilarious.
@@louisadare8235 I do find it interesting that Armstrong and Bain brought in female writers to help out on Fresh Meat [noticeably Penelope Skinner] as I do find the writing for the female characters a bit lacking on Peep Show looking back [Gail is a rare female character that's never a love interest and argues back against the guys bullshit which was needed more on the show].
@Gary Baldi I'm the real one. The large majority of people I mention Drifters to haven't heard of it. It hasn't been on TV since it ended in 2016. I wouldn't describe Fresh Meat as similar to Friends. It's surprising that it hasn't been shown on TV for years.
@Gary Baldi I've wondered about that too. I do wonder if they just couldn't find any new materiel for her after that so just wrote the 'left school' line to lampshade it! [the Lauren character is a regular on the USA version which is an interesting change given they largely stuck to ripping off the UK version with disastrous results!].
As a British teenager currently in a British school, I can confirm students are still exactly like this. Also many people still watch this show and I was once called a bus wanker. Edit: People also make gay jokes and call people in wheel chairs hot wheels.
I've been rewatching the Inbetweeners during exams and this show will never get old. Honestly, a spin-off with returning characters seems like the next step but this show will never be topped.
I'm 41 and still watch it. It perfectly captures being a teenager at that time, and teenagers still are like this - despite what the loud minority think.
They basically switched to movies [which made an absolute fortune]. I'm pretty sure they got offers for more episodes and a third movie but everyone wanted to move on and the guys were getting borderline getting to old for the parts by the second movie by there own admission.
@@jamesatkinsonja I mean by having more eps per series. Considering the popularity of the series & first film, it's puzzling that there was a 3-year gap between the 2 films.
@@davidz3879 Morris was invovled in Peep Show behind the scenes for a while and probably agreed on '6 per series' being ideal [and it is the standard for UK sitcoms after all]. The delay was partly as they didn't expect 1 to be that big a hit and hadn't planed for one though people were asked at the time [there is a clip on youtube of 3 of the 4 actresses who played the girlfriends in the film speculating on a sequel in March 2012 when one, Jessica Knappett, didn't end up appearing] Morris+ Beesley started writing the script a year later but the film was only confirmed a further year later [possibly delayed due to other work but maybe scripting took a while due to figuring out how to continue, another reason why they might have not been interested in a 3rd film]
@@davidz3879 The first film was only beaten by The King's Speech as the highest grossing UK produced movie of all time [2 is 3rd] domestically. Even if you include films that are funded by Hollywood but made partly in the UK [like James Bond] it's still 34th [ahead of Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom and at the time of writing 'The Batman']. They knew it would do well and thought the series could go out with a bag but there is no way they could have predicted it would be that successful [interviews at the time have the cast/crew saying they were blown away by it's success]. I got the impression they weren't planing a sequel but that level of success meant it needed to happen [hence why the 'happy ending' is pretty much undone in the first 5 minutes of the film as the girls have dumped them or turned toxic] and petty much was responsible for the glut of TV spin offs over the following few years.
I remember the show Skins came out to much fanfare and acclaim and it was the biggest load of shit ever. Far too much happening to be realistic, shit dialogue and annoying as fuck characters. And then the Inbetweeners appeared and even though its a comedy where nothing much really happens, i don't think I've ever related to something more. People just swearing at each other and constantly ripping each other while trying and failing to appear cool is pretty much a universal experience. I always compared the 2 shows as the complete opposite end of the spectrum on how to make a show about teenagers
Mmmm, that's a good find about Danny Glover. Certainly is part of the script, but not the show. Good pick. Reminds me of when games scripts do the same but so much content is cut
I think the beauty of the soundtrack is that it's used as if the producers knew some of those songs wouldn't age well. It's like if I'm watching an 80s movie with my parents and they cringe at music that they listened to in high school or college. So many of those worse mid-naughties indie hits are unlistenable now as they more so "Inbetweeners Music" than indie bangers to me now
@@h0g_27 You'd say that many groups of teenage friends go camping to places which have no facilities & no other people? What laugh & good time is there to be had at such a location?
@@peacefrog9617 Why would any of them want to camp at all? None of them previously show any interest in camping. The closest is Jay's fondness for caravan parks, but they have facilities & people. Will mocks Jay for having to use a 'bucket' at caravan club, yet is happy to use a trench when they camp?
Andrew, love your work! HOWEVER, the "it's alright" perception isn't mirrored in my American adolescent experience of the show. The BBC and Channel 4, along with the non-puritanical attitude of most Brits towards censorship of the mundane, were like an oasis in the shit-desert of American media growing up. Compare The Inbetweeners with any American show targeting the same demographic, such as the program where Ariana Grande broke through, "Victorious." American shows targeted towards teenagers are patronizing and basically unfunny in any way whatsoever. We're obsessed with diversity, and yes you will see a panoply of ethnicities represented in these programs, but without fail they're all upper middle-class kids in fancy flats going to meritoriously well-funded urban high schools. Not one show on American television reflected my life in the rundown, drug-ridden, working-class suburbs of Los Angeles. Seeing Jay caravanning with his classless dad and Neil begging for insignificant amounts of money for the fruity from his overly frugal father were so much more reflective of my actual fucking life as the son of broke Mexican migrants than seeing the vaguely Hispanic but altogether rich cunts on Disney's "Wizards of Waverly Place." To this day I think public media is Great Britain's greatest soft power weapon and it pisses me off to think the gov't would even consider fully privatizing Channel 4, even after seeing Black Mirror go straight to uncreative hell after it was sold to Netflix. You guys are so incredibly lucky to even have something like The Inbetweeners or Peep Show produced at all. There's so much censorship in America and nobody realizes it because they've never seen this sitcom geared towards British teenagers. Sure, it might not have been great compared to A Bit of Fry and Laurie or something, but the fact you have the public media infrastructure and lack of overmoralizing instincts you do makes British media products so consistently superior to American shows with budgets orders of magnitude larger it's ridiculous. You should be grateful, cunt! Keep it up.
@@Y-two-K Hi! I appreciate your thoughtfully valid reply and it's given me something to think about. I believe, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, The Inbetweeners, Victorious, and Wizards were, accounting for Anglo-American cultural differences, geared toward 13-17 year old children. However, I think the implied argument you're making (that Peep Show and the Inbetweeners are both adult programming) holds water. In fact until the release of "Euphoria" I don't know of any American program that catered in an honest, or at least a gaudily sensationalized simulacrum of adolescently honest, manner. Honesty in art is to me the tell-tale sign of mature programming, hence why children's TV is often bright, oversimplified, and pandering whilst adult media almost never is (and when it is it's done ironically and self-consciously [see Adult Swim]). I make the distinction between The Inbetweeners (a show for teenagers) and Peep Show (a show for adults) because I saw the program when I was 13-17 and thought it entirely age-appropriate. If anything me and my band of degenerate friends were worse. I also saw Peep Show at the same time and even then I could sense that they were qualitatively different. I would often have to pause and Google the references Sam and Jesse stealthily peppered into the show's dialogue. It taught me a lot about the adult world and British culture. I never had to do that with The Inbetweeners. Here's a great meditation by David Mitchell on the phenomenon of knowledge beyond a viewer's grasp and their responses to it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QjG9JcyLYbw.html I definitely wouldn't mind my teenagers watching something like it some day. It's in no way adult-y or profound, it just fills the gaping void of media representing teenagers as they actually are.
'Wouldn't it be funny if I was a prick all the time'. THIS! This is what is actually killing comedy. It's just lazy washed up has beens who desperately try to be edgy in an uncreative way and then cry 'woke' if you dont find their family guy humour funny.
I'm surprised by comparisons between Will and Mark Corrigan, as aside from their both being somewhat bookish and once having been privately educated I can't see that they have much in common. Mark is anxious, self-critical and very much aware of his flaws and lowly social position, whereas Will has a patina of private school polish and over-confidence which gets him into trouble (can you imagine Mark daring to talk to the mechanics in the way Will does?) but which also wins him a date with an older woman (Mark, in contrast, apparently asks a woman [Dobby] out for the first time in his early thirties, can't cope with Sally Slater and misses the moment with April). Mark is also more than capable of being devious and cunning where Will is both earnest and naive. You could argue that this reflects Will's comparative youth but I imagine a sixth-form age Mark as having been even shyer and more isolated than the version we see, comprehensive schools being less accepting places for men like him than a university or an office job. Will is an astute portrayal of the way in which teenagers (particularly of his class) can combine precocity and immaturity, and a private school will have nurtured both these aspects of his personality, whereas Mark strikes me as having been ground down by years of bullying. It seems that Will was relatively happy and well adjusted at his former school, whereas Mark was miserable (except on that one school trip). I think its implied that Mark left his private school much earlier than Will, and perhaps this explains the difference. On the show in general I think it's true to say the female characters are relatively underdeveloped, but it is also true that we see the world through the eyes of four teenage boys who don't know or understand much about girls, so it's not surprising that their perceptions are shallow. I do think that many teenagers of 16, at least at that time, still have/had mostly single-sex friendship groups (worth noting that boys mature more slowly).
You've certainly done a deep dive there! Minor point: Mark does hook up with Valerie and asks Sophie out to uncle Ray's funeral in series 1. Though his life to that point probably wasn't the misery of Mark's childhood [his dad doesn't care but isn't a monster like Dan Corrigan], I have though that Will could have turned out like Mark if he hadn't met the other guys. Say what you will about them but they do form a bond and care for each other deep down [like Will comforting Jay when things go wrong with Chloe] and I can't imagine any of those guys being as big a leech than Jez is to Mark after the show ends. Andrew mentioned in his series 1 extras video Mark probably only had one friend at school [the never seen Paul mentioned in his school report] before meeting Jez. The female characters are a bit underdeveloped in both Peep Show and Inbetweeners which is a bit of a shame looking back. I don't know when you went to school but I was at six form in 2006-2008 and I did notice more mixed friendships starting to form [most of my 6th form friends were women] and people who have teenage kids at work say its more common with there kids now.
@@jamesatkinsonja I can't see Will staying friends with Jay or Neil long-term after the events of the second film. Will has little in common with them & only becomes friends with them because they're Simon's friends & because having 3 friends means he'd be picked on less at school than if he didn't have them. Neil & Jay are going to have even less in common with Will when Will gains a degree & a good job.
I imagine that Valerie probably led Mark by the hand, much as she did with the dope, as I don't think we actually see him ask her back to the flat. I had forgotten the funeral, but so, it appears, did the writers, as there is a later episode in which Jez is fretting about one of his love interests and Mark says 'just ask her out, like I did', and Jez says something along the lines of 'just because today was the first time you have ever asked a woman out...' One of those 'oops, we forgot Series 1' moments. I think Sophie is a relatively well-developed character (I've certainly known plenty of women like her who struggle to balance their passing interest in the alternative with their conventional aspirations, drift along in boring office jobs and decide a baby will sort their lives out), and Nancy and Toni are great if smaller parts. Valerie is an excellent and original one-off character, one of the best in the show. Suze is a shallow stereotype, Elena is one-note, Gail is interesting in theory but seldom seen, Zahra is a non-entity. I don't think they ever quite decided what they were doing with April later in the show and Meghan too doesn't have much too her. Dobby was great in her debut but they botched the change in her personality and so she's badly rather than underdeveloped. So, a very mixed bag in contrast to the almost universally brilliant male characters (Mark, Jez, Johnson, Hans, Jeff, Gerrard, Gog, Darryl, Ian Chapman, Dan Corrigan...)
I think the inbetweeners, while good, could have been transcendent. If it focused on the accurate boyish banter and aimlessness of youth, it would be spot on. The goofy plots and silly contrivances bring it down. Also, Neil perfectly illustrates the fact that most stupid characters are just not funny. The guy who plays Simon just cannot act- often, it doesn't matter, because it comes off as awkward in a real-feeling way. However, there are times when it is just...bad. I have very mixed feelings on the show, because it is so close to genuine greatness a lot of the time. Great vid as always though!
@@davidz3879 Will's mum seldom ever does anything. She can hardly compare to Simon's dad's rascaly stories of his sexual past, and the way they embarrass poor Simon.Will's mum is mostly a prop that makes for good lines from others. Simon's dad is the master of his own devilish character.
The Inbetweeners was a show that had a big impact. It did spawn some copycats. Drifters tried to copy the style of humour, whilst there were two shows that copied the makeup of the group, BBC Three's Some Girls and a little Northern Irish show called Derry Girls
I think you do it a disservice; it's far from a 'simple' comedy. For all its crude, blunt and often hurtful humour, it can be poignant, reflective and emotional. There's a subtlety in the writing, belied by the surface brashness, and it deals with the vicissitudes of growing up really well.
I couldve sworn you did a video on deleted inbetweeners scenes and how they were cut for destroying the tone but i guess it must be either a different guy or maybe i just watched the scenes and read comments talking about why they werent good and misremembered that as a proper video
Why did s1 have very low viewing figures? I recommended it to many people in 2008 & 2009, but no-one I knew was interested. In 2010 it became popular & loads of people were talking about it. Some of the same people I recommended it to in 2008 & 2009 recommended it to me in 2010, to which I replied that I'd been telling them for 2 years how great it is.
When the British Sitcom History podcast' covered it they said it was one of the first shows to find it's audience on streaming along with DVD's and endless repeats [which are still ongoing to this day] by series 3 it had built an audience. They also added that the 6 most watched shows of all time on E4 are the 6 episodes of Inbetweeners 3.
I first tried watching it in 2008, but I gave up after the first episode. I had just left college a few years before hand by that point and didn't really click with it. It was only going back to it when I was older, with the nostalgia for my school days, that I started liking it
@@rorz999 Did you watch it in 2008? If so, were you fine with all its eps having under half a million viewers & the vast majority of people having not heard of it? It narrowly avoided being cancelled before s2 was made.
While there is dated elements [like many comedies] I still enjoy watching the show. Even in weaker episodes, the guys chemistry is fantastic and they own there parts [the fact they became great real life friends is nice too]. The London episode is probably my fav but the final episode where they go camping has a lot of fantastic character moments.
Derry Girls serves a pretty similar purpose to Inbetweeners I think: it’s a comedy time capsule, albeit of 90s Northern Ireland rather than 2000s England. Sure it swaps out Inbetweeners’ gross out humour for political and religious jokes but that makes the show a lot more grounded and realistic to post-Troubles NI imo - it’s still built on the backbone of how real teenagers in this time period behaved
The main character I never buy is Will's mum. It feels like she couldn't give less of a **** about her son, seems utterly socially unaware despite being somewhat young, has no real characteristics or interests and seems to go out of her way to embarrass Will.
I more get the sense she is a loving mother [certainly compared to his absent dad who couldn't even be bothered to invite his own son to his wedding] and only having 1 child probably means she is over protective of him. I do wonder if it's implied that Will didn't really have friends over before meaning she doesn't know what it appropriate to say in front of his firends. I do agree she could have been better developed though. She mainly fits the seemingly obligatory 'friends fancy the mum' role [like Jennifer Coolidge in American Pie] and we don't even know if she has a job. Probably the weakest of the parents given the others [especially Neil's Dad] are more memorable.
@@jamesatkinsonja Yeah totally. Good point about the not having friends over thing. However it feels like she embarrasses Will and is there for the boys to gawp at but you can't really imagine what she actually does when he's not there. Maybe that's the point....but like you say all the other parents are much more rounded/recognisable.
@@apjapki In fairness it probably is an issue about the female characters not being that developed. Simon's mum gets some decent scenes [often with the dad] but Jay's mum isn't even given a first name in her couple of appearances and Neil's mum left the family before the show starts. Neil's sister Katie is even less developed than Will's mum, mainly there to be gawped at and be mean, but again maybe it's a consequence of there not being time to flesh it out and the family who do make and impact are very memorable.
I've only just found that and it would be nice for Andrew to cover it [I find the 'Hot MILF' episode far more convincing on Pete than when Peep Show did it for Jez/Mark in series 8 as Rafe Spall is 10 years younger than them]. The commentators are almost that show's version of Peep Show's internal monologue.
@@jamesatkinsonja The commentary is intrusive & doesn't fit in with a sitcom. Having only one main character, who isn't interesting, prevented it from being successful.
I appreciate that you addressed the bigoted nature of the series in such a nuanced way. I it really boils down to that double-edged sword, of capturing the spirit of 2010s white, straight British teen boys. It was true that this demographic were very exclusionary and bigoted. At 12-14, it just wasn't an appealing sitcom to watch after getting sniped at all day by the exact kind of lad they were based on. If it had been a single movie, like Mean Girls, I think it wouldn't have had as much backlash. In my school in Glasgow, the comedy show everyone watched and quoted endlessly after each episode was Limmy's Show, and I won't deny it had some stinkers too. As they used to say at the time, our faves are problematic. We can enjoy them without pretending they're flawless.
@@rhudylofthouse2339 It's not my personal problem that the writers made the choice to focus on a kind of humour that was mean-spirited even at the time and didn't age well. That's my opinion. Like it or lump it.
@@theMoporter It's not really about whether it aged well or not or whether the humour was mean spirited. The point was the humour was supposed to be an accurate reflection of the reality of how a lot of adolescent boys interacted. Which it was. If you're suggesting they should have traded that for some idealised version of how teenage boys interact, then I think that's ridiculous.
@@funkyfranx That's kinda my point. Really encapsulating that time period has upsides and downsides to it. The downside in The Inbetweeners is that the comedy depends on finding that attitude to be funny instead of extremely uncomfortable.
I was also a teenager at the time, and personally I thought it was pretty unrelatable and shit. And I don't mean that as in "the shit" as in positive, I mean it felt pretty unfunny.
I must be slightly older than you so it’s probably an age thing, but I think the attraction for people my age wasn’t so much that it was a licence to act like a dickhead, but that it allowed forgiveness for acting like a dickhead in my youth and the ability to look back an laugh at it rather than feeling bad. In this way I think it was ahead of it’s time, and maybe we need more of that in the current ultra woke bullshit guilt industry.
That kinda seems like it's just about giving people a safe little bubble, getting told it's okay they did bad things, which is a bit of a backhanded compliment! Surely you can't be saying it's good because it isn't challenging? I think that's underselling it.
@@theMoporter I see what you’re saying but I guess my point is that it’s a high school context so you grow out of it but it’s funny to look back and realise how stupid it was. E.g. the gay and clunge jokes, recognise it and how silly it was in high school and have a sense of humour about it because it was so immature and stupid. Also, there were no gay or female victims in the show. Your point would be valid if the show depicted the boys bullying gay people or women, which it didn’t.
Love your videos and once over. I don’t think you should view a sitcom by todays, overly sensitive, values though. It was incredibly funny and allowed controversial subjects to be covered!
Music in the show is good, I remember thinking around that time there are so many great bands like the libertines, the Kooks, Razorlight, Bloc Party, strokes. At that time I thought to myself that rock ‘n’ roll was back for good and we probably wouldn’t see any manufactured shit pop bands anymore. Unfortunately all those bands released awful second albums, and the genre and scene just fizzled out. Shortly after we got Justin Bieber and K-pop 🤦🏼♂️
Do you not think you've been wound up by a bourgeois moral panic? That actually if something is a joke there is no need to get your nickers in a twist. Just a thought?
Simon Bird said in a 2020 interview with NME that they did have a 'get out of jail' card with being set around stupid teenage boys but he did say that's why he wouldn't be keen for a revival as older characters because 'when they are fully formed [it] becomes more problematic'. Credit for him for not just issuing the 'can't say anything these days' response.
Inbetweeners was the last great comedy before wokeness came along and ruined everything. We are told that we mustn't laugh at things like this anymore, but it doesn't mean we should pay any attention, and I frequently go back to these shows to cheer me up. That this kind of humour has become taboo in just a few short years makes it all the more enjoyable for me. It just drives home how puritanical, politically correct and joyless society has become practically overnight, and how important it is to remember that it wasn't always this way.
The world is fucked and many of us in the west are governed by ineffective, neglectful, illusionary democracies that leave its subjects powerless. I would advise you excuse people’s joylessness because of that.
