The Inbetweeners

Inbetweeners Simon: I'm just as bad as they are

Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas reckons he has the same luck with women as the hapless characters in the hit show.

Inbetweeners movie being written

The writers of E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners have confirmed they are penning a film version of the series.

The award-winning sitcom The Inbetweeners screeched towards the end of their second series. Two of the leading lads dropped their AS level revision in favour of futile skirt-chasing. For another, playing games-console footie constituted studying (it was PE, right?). The fourth, nerdy Will, drank so many energy drinks that his bowel exploded during his exam.

A series that finishes by trotting out poo puns - Will's mates called him Brad S**t and the Bumlog Millionaire - may not sound like an award-winner, and I'd be surprised if this second outing is as well decorated as the first. But the show is no more puerile than many "adult" (in its purest sense) comedies, and between the bog-standard stuff there were more surprisingly crisp lines: "Women are like fairground rides," advised one of the boys' dads: "F***ing mental."

However, much of the teen awkwardness is so accurately observed that it's almost hard to laugh. Spending more time colour-coding your revision timetable than you do on studying; your mum popping upstairs with some squash when you're entertaining your latest crush; the euphoria of getting served at the pub on the last day of school... such innocent storylines tap into such a huge angst pit that I could hardly watch: I was back as Alex Hardy, 6B, mortified - having finally realised how daft my backcombed fringe really looked.

The Inbetweeners to get third series

E4 commissions more episodes of critically acclaimed sitcom about four teenagers growing up in suburbia.

During a recent night out, tvBite was reduced to hysterics by a member of the office making friends with a former monk. It's testament to The Inbetweeners that we poked fun using their "Friend. Football friend" nonsense. Anyway, it's been a great series and somehow, the writing seems to have become even closer to the sixth form we remember, even as the stars start to look more and more Fonzie. We hope they'll do a new series, even if they are 40. The final episode sees Will on the verge of an absolute disaster and Jay having a real, not made-up, girlfriend.

Inbetweeners in dark over show

The stars of The Inbetweeners were left flummoxed today after news broke that a third series of the popular show had been commissioned - before producers told them about it.

Anyone lucky enough to have taken part in the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme will remember the disappointment felt upon realising that it doesn't just involve going camping with actual real girls, but going out and doing good deeds. Will and the rest of The Inbetweeners learn this the hard way after Will starts a DofE scheme and ropes them into helping out at a nursing home. This act of community goodwill descends into Jay being caught copping a very good look at a young picture of an old dear. Oh dear. Deliciously vile.

If it hadn't been such a deathly week on the box, I might never have seen The Inbetweeners. I would never have seen it because it's a horrible title that implies a reality show about pre-op transsexuals, and because it's billed as a comedy series. It turned out to be Grange Hill with irony and swearing. The Inbetweeners are those awkward years betwixt kid and adolescent, that moment when you've just been given puberty but haven't learnt how to play it yet. In tele­vision terms, it's that gap between Torchwood and Skins, a vehicle for actors who look younger than they are.

What was astonishing was that it made me laugh. Not just once but quite a lot, repeatedly. The person I share my so-called life with put her head round the door and asked what that terrible noise was. Just me laughing, dear. "Well, watch something else, you're frightening the dog." On the face of it, there's nothing about The Inbetweeners that singles it out for mirth. The acting is junior-drama-school standard: loads of enthusiasm, little skill. The setup of a public schoolboy dumped into a comprehensive is hardly brilliant, but the script is tight and witty and filthy and doesn't sag. I think the key to it being sort of brilliant is that all TV comedians have a relentless arrested development and are pitifully juvenile. So when you see real adolescents telling jokes and being disgusting, it turns out to be actually funny. The main character, the public schoolboy, is a Mini-Me version of David Mitchell.

The rest of the cast are childish impressions of most of the celebrity guests on jokey quiz shows, which perhaps proves that comedy really is a young person's game, the younger the better. And just as youth is wasted on the young, so jokes are pathetic on the middle-aged.

A thoroughly deserved second series for Iain Morris and Damon Beesley's award-winning teen sitcom, first shown on E4. The four Inbetweeners are back in hapless form as they embark on a sociology/geography trip to Swanage. In between them setting off and getting stuck on a boat in the harbour, Will and Simon fall for the same new girl, while Jay and Neil embarrass themselves. It may be crass but it's just as often sweet, hilarious and, sadly, realistic.

The smutty, fitfully funny, schoolboy comedy moves over from E4 in the same week as series three of Skins, sparking inevitable discussion about which offers the more realistic depiction of teenage life.

But this makes about as much sense as asking which paints a more accurate picture of adult life: EastEnders or Emmerdale. Correct answer? Neither.

But as Will, Simon, Jay and Neil set off on a geography trip to Swanage, Dorset, it will prompt coach-scented memories for viewers. While Jay is convinced that there's a middle-aged woman in Swanage eagerly awaiting the arrival of a bus-load of hormonal adolescent boys, Simon Bird's character Will still comes off like David Mitchell's geekier, more annoying little brother - the kid who has yet to learn that Yoda impressions will never get the prettiest girl on the bus to fancy you. A boat-load of trouble awaits.