James Buckley

Off The Hook Episode 1 Review

Comparisons to The Inbetweeners are unavoidable, not helped by Off The Hook's decision to cast someone from that show in a prominent role (James Buckley); and, while I'll argue that this comedy's university setting is more alluring than Inbetweener's dull Sixth Form, it's tamer and less funny...

Dan Owen, Dan's Media Digest, 11th September 2009

See The Inbetweeners? BBC3 certainly did. James Buckley, who was the brilliantly vile Jay in that series, plays one of a group of students in their first year at university, and he is far from the only debt this new sitcom owes to that programme. Off The Hook was initially some sort of online youth web TV thing, which obviously sounds ghastly, but the BBC are naturally jolly pleased with themselves for this sort of inclusive, participatory, cross-platform bullsh1t. Whatever. Surely the only two questions you need for a sitcom are "Is it well-written?" and "Is it well-acted?" The answers are "Not really" and "Quite well", but tvBite will give it a go out of love for the Bus W@nker.

TV Bite, 10th September 2009

Is it a crime to howl with laughter at a grubby teenage lad pleasuring himself over a vintage pic of an old lady in a nursing home? Well then lock me up and throw away the key, because you don't go in to The Inbetweeners expecting to have your intellectual parameters stretched, even if that does sound rather sexy. What you do get is the best laugh on British TV.

Eyebrows were raised when The Inbetweeners got a Bafta nomination (which incidentally, it should have won). Surely it was another nail in the coffin for the British sitcom when the potty-mouthed misadventures of a bunch of suburban adolescent misfits made the cut? Quite the contrary: it beats bourgeois breeder fave Outnumbered into a cocked hat. Outnumbered is for guilt-ridden media parents who believe in negotiating with toddlers when they've taken a dump in the showers of the gym (believe me, I've seen this happen); The Inbetweeners is what being a kid is really like.

Or maybe it's just me. But the hapless attempts of Will, Simon, Jay and Neil to survive the worst that having nice parents and a dull, unthreatening neighbourhood can throw at them, takes me right back to hanging about the avenues of my seaside town looking for something to rebel against other than neatly trimmed rhododendrons.

So if you haven't caught up with The Inbetweeners yet make sure you watch the last episode of season two tonight. Mind you, it will have to go some to beat the image of Jay (James Buckley, brilliant as the scummiest character on TV) in last night's pensioner rampage. If, however, you don't find the idea of calling someone an OAPaedo funny, then it's probably not for you. You could say The Inbetweeners helps you get back in touch with your inner youth. But the thought of Jay getting his sticky mitts round that concept just makes it sound plain wrong.

Keith Watson, Metro, 7th May 2009