The Inbetweeners

Thursday nights at ten are fast becoming teen hour on E4. We've recently come to the end of ten weeks of Skins, and now we're going to be getting The Inbetweeners from next Thursday. The Inbetweeners, if you haven't seen it, is like a British American Pie, full of gross-out humour and stupid stuff. What sets it apart from its BBC Three contemporary Coming Of Age is that it actually has some charm, some characters that you can like and some funny lines. It has also won a British Comedy Award, so there.

Simon Bird and Joe Thomas Interview

Forget Skins. The Inbetweeners is a geeky sitcom that shows British teenagers as they really are.

I kind of liked The InBetweeners. Okay, it was on E4, the watching of which, as Stewart Lee pointed out this week in Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, is normally like connecting a giant sewage pipe to your house. But it was surprisingly funny for a show aimed at "young adults" and was a refreshing antidote to Skins' über-coolness, principally thanks to its more realistic premise: four blokes who aren't quite nerds but who aren't popular, trying to be cool but failing.

Previously seen on E4, this likeably juvenile sixth form sitcom might not be as cool as Skins but it is a million miles better than BBC3's similarly themed Coming Of Age.

It stars Simon Bird as Will, a borderline geek who's been forced to move from a private school to a slightly scary comprehensive after his parents split.

Rudge Park School is set in a rosetinted suburbia with no teenage pregnancies, drugs, knives or guns - just comedy bullies, raging hormones and a rich seam of American Pie-style mishaps.

It also stars Joe Thomas as Simon, who looks uncannily like a young Peter Jones from Dragons' Den.

Not great, not bad, but definitely in between - but why is it scheduled so late on a school night?

Morris, Beesley prepping U.S. version of their U.K. hit

Iain Morris and Damon Beesley are working on a US pilot of their hit UK show, The Inbetweeners

At first glance, The Inbetweeners doesn't seem like very much. In the current climate of comedies and comedy-dramas meant to appeal to the adolescent college-graduate-in-waiting, headed by the effervescent Skins, it comes in as a sort of awkward cousin to the King that is Skins. But, The Inbetweeners should not be written off as a copycat of its E4 relation.

In writing The Inbetweeners, Damon Beesley and Iain Morris have provided what was becoming a stagnant comedy scene with a breath of fresh air. Yes, hormonal and sex-driven it may be, but therein lies the appeal. The Inbetweeners frequently transcends the boundary between a wry smile and full-on laughter with surprisingly subtle 'trigger' moments. For example, when Will's friend Simon turns up to the love of his life's house, only to be sick on her small brother.

The main laughs derive from the exquisitely accurate dialogue, capturing the feel of adolescence perfectly. Jokes about mums and dads, jokes about lack of sex, all subtly crafted into the dialogue, make you laugh, simply because you would be able to hear the same conversation in your local Topman at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. And that is why it is utterly charming. It never tries to be anything it's not, it never pretends to raise moral issues or tackle strong taboos, it simply shows that being a teenager can be fun after all. For no-frills, unadulterated high-spirited camaraderie between four mates, The Inbetweeners simply cannot be beaten.

I detest E4's excuse for a teen drama, Skins, so I went into The Inbetweeners with some trepidation. Since Shameless (still arguably the best teen drama on TV), Channel 4 has tried (and failed) to replicate its success with Skins and Almost Famous and I assumed this was just another of their attempts to scrape that barrel.

I'm happy to report I was wrong. This was a teen comedy with bathroom humour you'd expect but also the intelligence you perhaps wouldn't. It reminded me a bit of Malcolm in the Middle with the main character starting a new school, teased for being a 'briefcase mong' but desperate for acceptance. It was really funny with the characters completely believable and likeable. These were the teens I've seen and perhaps been and, unlike Skins, it painted a pretty solid picture of sixth form life.

The job of any episode is to make the viewer want to watch the next and this succeeded completely. If you were initially put off because you thought it was another immature teen comedy that would soon be forgotten, you might want to give this one a try. I can see this being a highlight of the week if the standard keeps up.

The rude, juvenile comedy in The Inbetweeners proved sharper [than The Invisibles]. Posh sixth-former Will has landed at a suburban comprehensive. At first his classmates hate him, but he blithely ignores their insults and insinuates himself into a group of foul friends. He is a brilliant teenage mix: insouciant, confident, vicious, scared and offended when all the boys fantasise about having sex with his mother. She's so sexy she could be a prostitute, one observes. The actors look so much older than 17.

Every line is polished and nasty. When one dad gives his son £20 for the pub, he asks him, Promise me you won't spend it on the fruit machines. I can't do that, the son replies. Will, frustrated at not being served, tells the barman that the other drinkers are underage (Look at that bum fluff - 16, look at that bra - it's padded), making him even more unpopular.

The second episode began with a disabled girl getting hit in the face with a Frisbee and progressed through (somehow inoffensive) homophobia and Will terrifying a seven-year-old that his parents were about to be vaporised in a dirty bomb in London. The floppy hair and spoddy specs are a disguise. He is, as he said, 'hard', and very, very funny.

E4's first sitcom about a group of cherry-popping quest, is aimed at teens. But the writers are in their 30s and the cast are blatantly in their 20s. Nothing rings true, and there are few proper jokes: flat gross-out humour and age-old geek/bully stuff take their place.

Television loves a geek. There's Sid in Skins, while Reaper and Chuck have both given power to the nerd. Now there's Will in The Inbetweeners.

The programme's funny too, in a knowing kind of way. Will (Simon Bird) is the new boy at his local comprehensive and he's not happy. He's there because his parents have divorced and he's had to leave private school. He wears glasses and a blazer and carries a briefcase - he's definitely not too cool for school. Worse, as a newbie, he has to wear a badge saying, "I am Will, stop me and say hello." He does find some mates - the trouble is, all of them are a bit sad and even they don't like him much.