People Who Want to Understand Teenage Boys Should Watch The Inbetweeners Not Adolescence
Like Kemi, I have not watched Adolescence. My reason is simply that the main character is pre-pubescent. He’s still a child – not an adolescent – a grave casting error. I do understand though that Starmer is hosting a round table discussion about the drama (or documentary as he keeps calling it). I fear he has got the wrong TV show. If he wants to better understand British adolescent boys, he, along with policymakers and parents, ought to be discussing instead The Inbetweeners – gloriously created before the age of the smartphone had set in to dampen a generation.
If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching The Inbetweeners, do so immediately. There you will meet four archetypical suburban teenage boys brilliantly created by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris:
Will: Geek, on the look-out for intelligent sophistication; has a MILF single mum.
Simon: Good looking, moons after out-of-reach girl Carly, stroppy to supportive parents.
Neil: Thick, good at dancing, always pulls, gay dad.
Jay: Bullshitter, undermining dad, weary mum.
Over three peerless series released between 2008-2012 we follow the boys through Rudge Comprehensive sixth form as they attempt to have a laugh, pass their exams and pull ‘clunge’. It is inconceivable that such entertaining, cringingly funny TV could be commissioned today. It captures perfectly the best and worst of adolescent boys: the crudity, the laziness, the furious pursuit of trying to have a tug in private, the crap cars, the boredom, the exquisite anticipation and crashing disappointment of parties, the relentless but not quite crushing rejection by girls but most of all, the unhinged ability to have a laugh together. The four boys are both hapless and hilarious and you long for all of them to succeed in spite of themselves.
Laurie Lee describes this period of pent-up potential best in Cider with Rosie: “By now I was one of those green-horned gang who went bellowing around the lanes, scuffling, fighting, aimless and dangerous, confused by our strength and boredom.”
How Will, Simon, Neil and Jay attempt to relieve their “strength and boredom” is by bashing in some daffodils with golf clubs, trying to host a dinner party, going camping and clubbing and other catastrophe-strewn but optimistic ventures. And this is the lesson that Starmer and concerned parents need to take: teenage boys need to just do stuff. They need to have a laugh and bellow around figurative lanes, and for this, they need to hang out together, not remain isolated in their rooms on phones. As I write this, four Year 12 boys, friends of my 16 year-old son, are in the garden supposedly filming something for their Film Studies A-Level. What they are actually doing is spinning two boys together in the hammock until tied in a knot, the others swing the hammock into the hedge, they fall out, and then do it all over again. The bellows of laughter are loud and happy.
In short, teenage boys need to turn outward in all their clumsy, active glory, not inward to become the worst of themselves.
For all its obvious flaws, if discussion around Adolescence encourages more youth clubs to open, venues to welcome the under-16s, a nationwide relaunch of the pool hall, parents to invite more children over for hangouts and parties, rather than leaving them to scroll or game alone in their room, then fine by me, my teenage sons, and all the other Wills, Simons, Neils and Jays out there.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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I doubt the intention of the show was to help people understand teenagers.
OMG I loved The Inbetweeners. The movie was equally as hilarious. That and Peep Show were my fave ‘laugh out loud’ shows years ago. I was so impressed with the acting of those lads though, and much like any shows featuring Ricky Gervais, I’d always wonder how many takes they had to do just to complete a scene, never mind an entire episode, because you’d just crack up half the time.
Me to, very funny indeed. the scenes with the teacher, can’t remember his name, remind me of psychopathic PE teachers of old
As a then 60yr old, I found the show very funny as it took me back to the early 60s and the funny, useless and often dangerous things we got up to and always finished laughing our heads off and still friends afterwards.
I was then working 70 hours a week milking cows before going to agricultural college and we worked hard and played hard but it laid the ground for a successful career in farming, politics and planning and I am still an ‘ass’.
As David Icke often points out, it is the opportunity to push the Problem-Reaction-Solution on an ignorant public. As just like the press in the Rape capital Sweden, it’s all the fault of the white man.
Yeah people think Icke is a nutcase but he’s right on this.
No it wasn’t. It was blatant “woke” propaganda from start to finish.
If you want the American version at the turn of the century, and probably where they got their ideas from — American Pie.
The author’s glowing recommendation prompted me to look up this series, which I’d never heard of, not having watched telly since the days of Monty Python, The Young Ones & Fawlty Towers. I found the first few episodes on Youtube, and it seemed like fun for about 60 seconds, before the gross, crass obsession with sex and obscenities began, and I switched it off. I looked up some ordinary reviews of it, and though many people liked the series, I agreed with those who did not: — “I just don’t understand the how this show got so popular. It’s pathetic. It’s badly acted and relies purely on naughty words to get laughs. It’s just not funny. Imagine a 12 year old trying to write Superbad and you get the idea. It makes me cringe. That this is held up alongside Peep Show (1000 times funnier) is so depressing and just shows how little audiences have to come to expect. There’s nothing inventive or clever here, just unlikable characters throwing base insults at each other – and that grates after the first two minutes. It’s all about cheap, easy laughs and clearly that’s enough for a lot of people. How sad.… Read more »
Well, we seem to have a range of opinions here… 😁
Such is the nature of Art. The important bit is that we can discuss it, agree or disagree, and then go on with our lives. Its how we used to do things
Incidently, its my opinion that Peep Show was hackneyed rubbish, as most things David Mitchell who I find terribly over-rated. Only an opinion, I know, but lets not forget who’s opinion it is….
Which is a good thing! Personally, the inbetweeners certainly reminded me of those teenage years, gross and gormless as they were… we all knew a Jay at school as well, every class had at least one
In crowd-out crowd, very important in a Highschool.
True it is no Alan Partridge or Farther Ted. Or even 2pointfour children made from around 1991 1999. The farther in the latter Gary Olsen died in 2000 so the series died with him. Good comedy that, with some historical references thrown in.
If you don’t like obscenities you might enjoy the Gaylord Pentecost series of books by Eric Malpass, set in the English countryside in what seems like a bygone age but I think mid-60s onwards, more or less when they were published. It covers the main character from young boy to young man, and his family. Morning’s at Seven, the first one, is possibly best known but I enjoyed them all.
Thank you for that interesting recommendation, Transmission! I’ve never liked smut of any kind, at any age, in writing or conversation, art, cinema, music or literature. It just encourages Satan’s attempt to make the whole of humanity obsessed with sex and the nude human physical form. Sex is a Soul Trap. Even Hindus are taught that speaking or writing or thinking obscenities lowers the soul’s vibrational level to focus on crude bodily functions instead of higher things. So many authors have written great stories without any porn or obscenities, and I like all those old-fashioned authors like Charles Dickens & Jane Austen & The Wind in the Willows, and old telly like “The Last of the Summer Wine”. So I looked up that 1965 book by Eric Malpass, and instead found “Morning’s at Seven” by American author Paul Osborn, written in 1938, about small town America. But it wasn’t as well-reviewed as the Malpass one about rural England, so I’ll try to find a copy to read. I gather that the Pentecost family series by Malpass is not well known in his homeland of England, but very popular in Europe, especially France & Germany, where they’ve made movies based on… Read more »
Ah I didn’t know there was another book with that name. How odd.
Yes I believe Malpass is popular in Europe – maybe they still imagine all of England is still like that. I think the Germans adapted one of two of the books for TV. I think they would make good TV – nice and slow. But TV doesn’t seem to want to do slow any more, and anyway there’d be no room for brown people etc in it, unless they bastardised the books, so better leave them alone.
I think I read them in the order of publication which seemed to work. I think Evensong is out of print – I can’t find it anywhere.
Yes, it is odd, and makes me wonder whether Malpass got his idea from the 1938 Paul Osborn American novel, and then applied it to rural England. Nothing wrong with that, but to actually pinch the title is a bit off. I completely agree with the rest of your comment.
OK, that makes sense to follow the order of publication, so I’ll do that.
Thanks again for recommending it.
I am not keen on constant lazy vulgarity- it has its place in art when required to reflect reality, but I also think it’s good to watch and read about people behaving excellently. There’s a great clip of Antonin Scalia talking about this which I will dig out and link to later.
This is the great Scalia on vulgarity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvttIukZEtM&feature=youtu.be&t=2439
“There are dignified and excellent ways to behave and there are undignified and base ways to behave, and people who regularly do the former are better than people who regularly do the latter. And unless you believe that you’re going to have a vulgar society.”
I’ve caught glimpses of it over the years and decided to give it a miss – each to his own.
Isn’t the point of the article , that boys are immature at this age and need the innocence of potty humour. Yes it is crude but so believable.
In the first few minutes of the first episode I watched, the boys were swearing and excited talking about an Adult Female Paedophile in the town they were about to visit on their school trip, who had vowed to have sex with all the 13-year-old boys on the bus.
Just imagine if the genders were reversed, and 13-year-old girls were swearing and excited about an Adult Male Paedophile in the town they were about to visit on their school trip, who had vowed to have sex with all the 13-year-old girls on the bus.
It is Normalizing Paedophilia.
And there is no such thing as “the innocence of potty humour”.
Kids never talked like that when I was a kid. It’s disgusting.
I was 50 ish when Inbetweeners broke & I got every single nuance , my Lads cut their Humorous real life teeth on this programme , we still watch it now when we want a proper laugh 😂
“Starmer is hosting a round table discussion…”
…Oh what a bundle of laughs that will be.
Wonder if he just wears those glasses to look official.
Except he said he was hosting just a round table; he forgot the discussion bit. I immediately thought plank meets table.
Ha-ha-ha! “Plank Meets Table”— love it! 🙂
If he wants to better understand British adolescent boys
Starmer-the-Contemptible? The man who kneels to black thugs? He doesn’t want to understand British boys – he wants to abolish the white ones.
Hear, hear! Well said!
Trump supporter puts BBC lady in her place!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8TQU0qO7S0
TV should be entertainment, unhindered by politics agenda and ideology, I afraid to tackle real social issues, eg Islamist on the campus or plainly on the street, influencing young immigrants…
some here criticise the earlier show, but they kiss the point of good old fashion humour (generally slapstick laddy kind) judged by 2020’s worldviews.
any wonder Monty Python or Little Britain would never be made today? Fear.
“I’m a lady” turned out very prescient.
The Monty Python lads managed to make the world laugh without using any obscenities.
Never watched The Inbetweeners, but having had two sons and brought them up as a single Mum, I doubt if it highlighted any behaviour which I didn’t experience directly. My sons had the closest thing to a free range older childhood/adolescence I could sensibly give them in the noughties.
I did, a little while ago, finally get around to watching The Derry Girls on Netflix…. and that was hilarious.
You were a single mother? And yet you didn’t involve yourself in the discussion the other day where, as usual, men were denigrating women ( single mothers in this instance) and as usual it was me, myself and I countering their obvious prejudice and drawing attention to the fact there’s various reasons why women might find themselves in such circumstances. But many on here need no excuse to look down on the opposite sex, evidently.
But don’t tell me, don’t tell me….you must have missed those posts.? 🙈🙉🙊
Whatever you do, don’t make any Jokes About Ironing, unless you want to start World War Three. 🙂
Were these people never teenagers?
I understand teenagers because I was one and spent years at school with other teenagers, and I have been able to observe teenagers “in the wild” regularly during my life so far.