The Inbetweeners

Return of telly's funniest show

To fans of its filthy gags and puerile pranks, TV hit The Inbetweeners is the height of cool.

We're truly excited by the return of Will, Simon, Jay and Neil's scholarly antics with The Inbetweeners. As we rejoin the lads, Simon's dream of not being ignored at school has come true, although he's only reached such heights of fame thanks to what he did to his trousers during an exam at the end of the last series...

The cult turned mainstream hit is back - and just because our hapless, filthy-mouthed boys are now in the top year of sixth form, it doesn't mean they escape regular humiliation. It all begins again here with a charity fashion show organised by Carli - Jay is jealous that Simon has been asked to model but poor Si ends up showing off far more than he intended on the catwalk.

The Inbetweeners: get set for a new term

Whisper it quietly, but there's another returning TV series about to begin which I'm even more excited about than Mad Men - The Inbetweeners on E4.

After their surprising win at the Baftas where they picked up the audience award, TV's sex-obsessed sixth-formers have just started shooting their first feature film in the party resort of Malia in Crete.

They return for a third series with a rucksack full of crude schoolboy banter, wardrobe malfunctions and possibly the first use of the word "Simples" in a sitcom. This week, Rudge Park Comp hosts a fashion show and the boys have very different views on it.

Geeky Will (Simon Bird) thinks it's all just politically incorrect vanity, Jay is desperate to strut his stuff, Neil sees it as a prime opportunity for ogling half-dressed girls and Simon is just eager to do whatever the lovely Carli asks him to - even if it means exposing more of himself than he means to when he pulls on a racy pair of Speedos.

More power, more shame, more childish fury. What ]The Inbetweeners does best is win jeopardy from the unimportant things. So small issues become enormous, just like when you're at school. So when Simon models in a pair of speedos and has a slight wardrobe malfunction (brilliant prosthetic make up work, by the way), it's really horribly, horribly cringey.

Three series in, they're clearly running into two problems: a) the three protagonists are approaching Fonzie-style age problems in hanging around a school with all those kids and b) the scripts don't seem to have quite as many brilliantly adolescent memes.

Still, a) doesn't really matter, if you're grown-up about fiction. And b) is only true because you expect them to be so good. Really, it is funny.

A third series of the Bafta-winning sixth form-set series sees Will (Simon Bird) and his friends subjected to further humiliations. The catwalk of a school fashion show is the last place on earth you'd expect to see Will. So, of course, that's where he ends up...

The Inbetweeners: series three, episode one

Let us know what you think of the teenagers' latest cringeworthy escapades in the E4 series.

Inbetweeners creator admits he's Will & co-writer's Jay

As Channel 4's funniest sixth-formers return for a third series of drunken fumbling the sitcom's makers tell us how much of The Inbetweeners is based on their own teenage life.

The Inbetweeners visit The Sun newspaper

Inbetweeners star Simon Bird used to get grief from parents - while working as a kids' football ref.