The Inbetweeners

Simon Bird Interview

The London Paper talks the star of The Inbetweeners.

Now that Skins has finished, and hopefully gone off to give itself a good talking to about the ratio of attention it gives to the bad characters and the good ones, E4 has gone all comedy-obsessed on a Thursday.

The highlight of this new(ish) line-up is, of course, The Inbetweeners. Whereas Skins shows us the lives of the cool kids very few of us ever were, this show features the more normal (i.e. hopelessly inept) teenagers we've all known and most of us have been. The first series was an unexpected delight (because it was hindered by the worst trailer in the history of television), and this second series will hopefully continue in the same vein.

For the uninitiated, we follow Will, Simon, Jay and Neil, four schoolboys who must be about 17 (but look older) as they fail at education, romance and life in general. Lovingly observed yet very, very funny, this show is the perfect reminder that the teenage years are not all about hot sex in wardrobes, underground hip-hop gigs and glamourous proms - they are also about insecurity, awkwardness, bumbling about and looking like a tit.

'Anti-Skins' comedy series returns

School sitcom The Inbetweeners is back for a second series on Thursday night. Newsbeat talks to two of its stars about comparisons to Skins, the future of the show and getting spotted in toilets.

Inbetweeners - The latest teenage pick

The Inbetweeners is the latest series to show that British TV is challenging America in the teen market. And young viewers love it.

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.