The Inbetweeners

Aside from my frequent indulges in all things Monty Python I have never been much for British comedy. Why? Well, I just haven't watched it because I haven't had the chance to get too well-versed in that world. For some reason I keep thinking of Austin Powers even though the man behind him is the very much not British and only sometimes funny Mike Myers. Mainstream British comedy seemed to be tainted in my mind before I could even enjoy it. 

But this series came highly recommended to me from a reliable source so I decided to give it a go. While I enjoy a good comedy, I admit that it is tough to make me laugh. I may smirk, I may giggle, I may chuckle, but I rarely laugh. 

Not since Wolf of Wall Street has anything really made me hold my sides laughing. 

This series has comedy that will hurt. The comedy is so cringe-inducing that it literally hurts when you start laughing. At times, I just couldn't watch. I looked away like a scared little kid watching The Exorcist for the first time. It was just too painfully funny to watch all the way through. 

I think the crowning achievement for me was when Simon (the character played by Joe Thomas) threw up on Carli's little brother. I mean, there are a lot of moments in this short eighteen episode series that will kill with laughter, but that one etched itself a firm spot in my memory.

This series definitely went for some gross-out gags and there's a lot of sexual innuendo and foul language, but in some ways this series reminded me a bit of Scrubs, with the hopeless and borderline incompetent main character that you still somehow root for and an overbearing authority figure that delights in that character's misery. Of course, I'm talking about Greg Davies as Mr. Gilbert. Greg Davies, with his rather limited screen time compared to the rest of the gang, is absolutely hilarious with his ability to keep straight face and be a dick. 

This is a fairly short series so I don't have a lot more to say about it. I'm not very familiar with the actors or the director. I'd have to Google their history. Still, I don't think I recognized any of them. But I really enjoyed this series, anyway. It doesn't have a lot of character depth to it and it can feel repetitive at times (all the jokes are basically about sex), but it does play to its strengths and it keeps things funny. What is funny in episode one is typically still funny in episode six and so on.