The Inbetweeners

_****

After transferring from a private school Will tries to navigate his first day at a state school with one simple mission: make friends. Unfortunately for him his outspoken indignance does not endear him to a large number of people.

To ask me what first brought the Inbetweeners to my attention is to ask the impossible; I am far removed from British culture, and have no reason to have heard of this series before now, but for whatever reason I managed to catch the first episode of the series at some point in the not-too-distant past, and it managed to make a lasting impression on me. I look forward to the hijinx that these boys can get into, and hope to continue watching their journey through the final years of their teenage lives.

The villains of the piece present themselves in the forms of Mr. Gilbert, played by Greg Davies, the head of sixth form, and school bully Mark, played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes, both of whom delight in Will's (Simon Bird) misery. Both play great roles to wreak havoc in Will's personal and academic lives, and the show would suffer without them.

The relationships between these kids and their parents is great to watch. Will's determination that his mother (Belinda Stewart-Wilson) not pick him up from school, or the pub, both because it is seen as 'uncool' and because he worries that his new found friends and enemies will make derogatory comments regarding her attractiveness. Simon (Joe Thomas) is caused panic when his mother (Robin Weaver) comments on the amount of gel in his hair; his subsequent ranting that it's too late to wash it out and eventual storming out of the house (only to return and ask for money) is incredibly relate able and accurate in regards to the uncertain teenage-years many viewers will have gone through.

Will's determination to make friends is endearing at first but grows well beyond the awkward phase and into the pathetic when he goes to Simon asking if he'd like a seat saved in the next class while everyone around him mocks his current erection. There comes a point that social-awkwardness is no longer funny, and Will probably should have just walked away.

Many of the minor, unnamed characters are a little too awful to be believable. There would naturally be people that teased Will at school, but for everyone in the halls to lash out at him unprovoked seems somewhat unrealistic to me.

Everyone in this cast has a great concept of who their character is, and how they would act in these situations. At no point is anyone over-the-top, or unable to emote; they're all perfectly suited to the roles that they're playing and come across as very real people. While the group of new students that Will is so determined to get away from seem a little creepier and nerdier than most of the other characters, that's also how they were intended to be presented, and aren't given enough screen time to make a greater impression on the audience than they were meant to.

Director Gordon Anderson shows us exactly what we need to see, nothing more and nothing less. There are no lingering shots, no pauses in the action, and no excessive cut-aways to detract from the story. Everyone involved seems to understand where they should be at any given time, and while there's nothing outstanding to praise about how this episode is shot, there's also nothing to complain about.

Written by creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris is a script that is quite funny without crossing the line into the absurd. The narration by Will is incredibly clever, ridden with one-liners that are easy to miss if the viewer isn't paying close enough attention. Where many shows would pause after a joke so as to allow the audience time to laugh, Inbetweeners just continues on at a natural pace, assuming that the viewer is clever enough to keep up with the narrative at hand. Beesley and Morris have a good idea of the characters that they're trying to convey, and waste no time in developing them in a very realistic and natural manner.

Where many shows attempt to highlight the intense dramaticism affluent to many characters in their teen years, the Inbetweeners instead focuses on how funny many of those situation are in actuality. The horror felt by these characters as they deal with unwanted erections and embarrassing parents is something that will come to be funny to them in hindsight, possibly years later, and it's their reactions that make everything to humorous.

The Inbetweeners is in the running to become the feature for Fridays. The series ran from 2008 to 2010 on E4 with a total of 18 episodes.