The Inbetweeners

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.

The Inbetweeners 1 & 2 Review

Overall, too many episodes of The Inbetweeners fall flat at the last hurdle to be considered truly successful, but at least none of the adventures are totally boring. The dialogue revels in its ugliness and the main characters are engaging and sympathetic. Now, if they could only just deepen the plots, flesh out the girls, and paint the adults with a bit more sincerity...

Booze, birds and the time of their lives - that's just what the four lads in E4's real-world answer to Skins aren't having. Jaw droppingly discomfiting and achingly truthful, the (all-too-brief) highs and (all-too-prolonged) lows of teen life are plumbed for comedy value in this excellent schoolbased show as briefcase-wielding nerd Will and his classmates relentlessly mock each other's humiliations. In other words, Schadenfreude of the highest order.

Inbetweeners is costing lads sex

Inbetweeners stars say their bumbling TV characters are putting their off-screen sex lives in danger. The actors say girls cringe at the sight of them because of their antics on the E4 comedy.

Video chat: 'The Inbetweeners' lads

We caught up with the boys earlier this week for a ham sarnie and a chat about naked scenes, E4 teen rival Skins, and a cheeky bit of clunge.

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.

Katy Brand and Inbetweeners to air in US

BBC America has acquired the broadcast rights to ITV2 sketch comedy Katy Brand's Big Ass Show and E4 comedy The Inbetweeners.

Both shows, which each comprise two 6 x 30-minutes series, are scheduled to broadcast on the cable network later this year.

The second series of this witty sitcom about the shenanigans of less-than-cool teenage boys is certainly matching the first season. Tonight it's work experience week and a mix-up at school leaves Will (Simon Bird) at a garage where, he announces, he's "too clever" to work.

The Inbetweeners is comedy of the highest quality while also puerile, disgusting and faintly inappropriate. It has sparked a debate as to whether it or Skins is more "realistic". In terms of realism, that's easy - The Inbetweeners is streets ahead with a cast of misshapen youths whose lives have the mundanities and embarrassments of most teenage existences. Skins, however, portrays teenagers as they think they are - serious, tragic, deep, and drifting through life to a Now that's What I Call Emo soundtrack.

The Inbetweeners is age-defying because it contains the universal truth that at 17, you are seldom serious, tragic or deep anywhere other than in your own mind. It is difficult to know whether the BBC, with its current compression under compliance, could cut loose and make a comedy featuring schoolboys who refer incessantly to bodily fluids, lie continually about crude sexual practices, lech over each other's mums and speculate freely about their fathers' orientation.