The Inbetweeners

Details

Following his parents' divorce, Will McKenzie has been forced to leave his fee-paying private school, move to a new area with his mother and enrol in the sixth form at the local comprehensive. Unfortunately, some of Will's more snobbish tendencies have survived the move and, combined with the enormous green badge identifying him as a new pupil, it doesn't take long before he's attracted the attention of practically everybody he'd rather avoid. With no friends and the school bully already making his life miserable, Will desperately needs to find somewhere to fit in.

His first, albeit initially reluctant, friend is Simon Cooper, who's been instructed to show the new boy around the school. Simon soon introduces Will to his friends Neil and Jay and, despite their early reservations about having the strange briefcase-carrying new kid hanging around with them, Will gradually becomes the fourth member of the group.

Simon is the romantic of the four and has been hopelessly in love with childhood friend Carli D'Amato for years. Unfortunately, Carli already has a boyfriend and Simon possesses roughly the same amount of romantic ability as the rest of the group. After drunkenly spray-painting his feelings across her driveway, his supposedly secret crush isn't particularly secret any more.

Neil Sutherland is generally about twenty seconds behind everybody else and frequently appears to be living in a world entirely of his own. However, every so often he manages to come out with something almost profound and, unlike his friends, occasionally seems capable of enjoying himself without analysing everything to death. He's also surprisingly good at dancing. His unconventional, tank-top-wearing father is less fortunate and becomes the target of a seemingly endless stream of jokes from the boys.

Then there's Jay Cartwright. Everybody probably knew a Jay at school - the friend who claims to have done absolutely everything despite there being no evidence that he's actually done any of it. A permanently hormone-filled, potty-mouthed fantasist, Jay continually boasts about his sexual conquests and extraordinary experiences, most of which become considerably less believable the longer he talks about them.

Together, the four boys attempt to negotiate sixth-form life, parties, girls, alcohol and the seemingly endless pursuit of sex. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm is rarely matched by either experience or common sense, meaning even the simplest teenage adventure has the potential to end in complete humiliation.

Picture & Sound

No doubt filmed on an extremely tight budget, the picture quality isn't really anything special. There's also an important caveat in that the preview discs supplied for review aren't the finished retail release, so what I'm watching may not be completely representative of what eventually appears in the shops.

Nevertheless, the relatively soft and occasionally blocky image is perfectly watchable, with only sporadic problems with grain. Colours and detail are adequate rather than impressive and, as you'd expect from such recent material, there's no print damage to worry about. This is no big-budget Hollywood blockbuster and there's nothing here worth getting particularly upset about - after all, it's the comedy content we're more interested in.

As with other DVD outings from the Channel 4 comedy stable, there's very little to expect from the sound department. Still, the 384Kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is more than sufficient for the programme's needs, with the all-important dialogue remaining crisp and clear throughout whilst the upbeat, teenage-friendly musical soundtrack complements the action nicely.

It's certainly not going to win any awards for sound quality, but neither does it need to. This is a dialogue-driven, relatively low-budget television comedy and the soundtrack does exactly what's required of it.

Menu & Extras

Unfortunately, the preview discs aren't the finished retail version, so there are no proper menus or extras available for me to explore and pass judgement on. As a result, I can only comment on the supplementary material promised for the final two-disc release rather than pretending I've actually seen it.

On paper, though, it sounds like a decent collection. There are Audio Commentaries featuring the writers, cast and producer, Video Diaries from all four principal cast members, a Making Of Documentary, Meet the Cast and a selection of Deleted Scenes. Judging by previous comedy releases from Channel 4, these should make worthwhile additions to what is already a rather entertaining package.

Overall

Originally commissioned for E4, this series is so good that it really deserves to be moved to the considerably more accessible Channel 4. In fact, I'd go as far as saying it would probably have received a much larger audience and considerably more press coverage had it been shown there in the first place. Until this review disc arrived I'd never even heard of the series and, considering how much I enjoy this sort of comedy, that feels like a fairly substantial marketing failure.

At first glance the premise hardly sounds revolutionary. Four teenage boys spend most of their time thinking about girls, talking about sex, attempting to get drunk and desperately trying to appear considerably more experienced than they really are. What makes The Inbetweeners work so well is just how painfully recognisable much of it is.

Will is the obvious outsider and Simon Bird is excellent at making him simultaneously sympathetic and incredibly irritating. His intelligence and private-school background leave him convinced that he's slightly better than the people around him, but it doesn't take long to discover that when it comes to girls, friendships and surviving school he's every bit as hopeless as everybody else.

The other three complement him perfectly. Simon is permanently obsessed with Carli and capable of spectacularly embarrassing himself whenever she's nearby, whilst Neil frequently seems completely oblivious to whatever disaster is unfolding around him. Then there's Jay, whose increasingly ludicrous stories of sexual conquest are so obviously fabricated that half the fun comes from wondering exactly how far he'll push the latest one before somebody finally calls him a bullshitter.

The chemistry between the four is superb and that's probably the programme's greatest strength. They continually insult, humiliate and undermine one another, but there's never any real doubt that they're friends. Anyone who remembers their teenage years will probably recognise at least part of their own group in these four - including the mate who everybody mercilessly took the piss out of but who was nevertheless always there.

There's certainly no doubting that the series is aimed primarily at a teenage and young-adult audience, so parents and people of a fragile disposition should probably beware. There's plenty of swearing, endless references to sex and some spectacularly inappropriate conversations. However, although my own teenage years are well behind me now, that doesn't stop much of the material being horribly familiar.

That's really why it's so funny. Strip away some of the more outrageous situations and there are moments here that pretty much every teenager and young adult will be able to relate to: getting drunk far too quickly, desperately trying to impress somebody you fancy, saying something stupid in front of your friends and discovering that being sixteen isn't remotely as glamorous as you thought it was going to be.

Considering one of the writers, Iain Morris, is a former Channel 4 comedy commissioning editor who script-edited Peep Show, comparisons with that award-winning series are probably inevitable. There are certainly similarities in the willingness to make the central characters look absolutely dreadful and in the painfully embarrassing situations they continually create for themselves. Still, who's complaining? If the formula works, why not put it to work somewhere else?

There are also shades of Teachers, although this time we're firmly on the other side of the classroom. Rather than looking back at school through rose-tinted glasses, The Inbetweeners remembers that being a teenager frequently involved embarrassment, frustration, terrible decisions and a constant fear that everybody else was somehow having considerably more fun than you were.

My biggest complaint is simply that there are only six episodes. Just as the characters and relationships really start to settle into place, you reach the end and want more. Let's hope a second series is commissioned and, this time, perhaps Channel 4 will give it the exposure it deserves.

If you're a fan of Peep Show, Teachers or simply remember enough of your own teenage years to appreciate just how painfully accurate some of this is, then The Inbetweeners is well worth discovering. Crude, embarrassing, occasionally disgusting and extremely funny. Highly recommended.

Special features

• Audio Commentaries by the Writers, Cast and Producer
• Video Diaries from All Four Cast Members
• The Making Of Documentary
• Meet the Cast
• Deleted Scenes