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'The Inbetweeners' In The Press...

Inbetweeners star Emily Head has revealed the boys will be getting naked in the new series of the show.

The Inbetweeners, 11th March 2010

Since it was announced that The Inbetweeners had been handed a third series, we've been waiting patiently for the laughs to begin again. Sadly, we recently learnt that filming for the new run doesn't begin until March - meaning it could be aaaaaaages until Will, Simon, Jay and Neil are back on our screens. To help pass the time, Tube Talk got on the blower to Blake Harrison to talk girlfriends, gay dads and those movie rumours.

Written by Dan French. Digital Spy, 26th January 2010

James Buckley has hinted that The Inbetweeners may end after its upcoming third series.

Written by Dan French. Digital Spy, 21st January 2010

In what can only be described as an editorial oversight, The Inbetweeners was absent from our Best of 2008 lineup. However, thanks to much hilarity from Simon Bird and co (who can forget the night out in London?), the E4 comedy has rocketed into our chart this year at a respectable No.4. Impressive ratings and a more realistic take on teenage life (Skins, we're looking at you) have secured the show a third series... and potential movie.

Dan French, Digital Spy, 1st January 2010

An interview with The Inbetweeners co-writer Iain Morris to find out how production on Series 3 is progressing.

Written by Dan French. Digital Spy, 1st December 2009

Matt Smith unsuccessfully auditioned for The Inbetweeners prior to landing his iconic Doctor Who role.

Written by Dan French. Digital Spy, 27th November 2009

Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas reckons he has the same luck with women as the hapless characters in the hit show.

Written by Stuart Pink. The Sun, 15th November 2009

The writers of E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners have confirmed they are penning a film version of the series.

Press Association, 8th September 2009

The award-winning sitcom The Inbetweeners screeched towards the end of their second series. Two of the leading lads dropped their AS level revision in favour of futile skirt-chasing. For another, playing games-console footie constituted studying (it was PE, right?). The fourth, nerdy Will, drank so many energy drinks that his bowel exploded during his exam.

A series that finishes by trotting out poo puns - Will's mates called him Brad S**t and the Bumlog Millionaire - may not sound like an award-winner, and I'd be surprised if this second outing is as well decorated as the first. But the show is no more puerile than many "adult" (in its purest sense) comedies, and between the bog-standard stuff there were more surprisingly crisp lines: "Women are like fairground rides," advised one of the boys' dads: "F***ing mental."

However, much of the teen awkwardness is so accurately observed that it's almost hard to laugh. Spending more time colour-coding your revision timetable than you do on studying; your mum popping upstairs with some squash when you're entertaining your latest crush; the euphoria of getting served at the pub on the last day of school... such innocent storylines tap into such a huge angst pit that I could hardly watch: I was back as Alex Hardy, 6B, mortified - having finally realised how daft my backcombed fringe really looked.

Alex Hardy, The Times, 5th August 2009

The stars of The Inbetweeners were left flummoxed today after news broke that a third series of the popular show had been commissioned - before producers told them about it.

The Sun, 4th August 2009

During a recent night out, tvBite was reduced to hysterics by a member of the office making friends with a former monk. It's testament to The Inbetweeners that we poked fun using their "Friend. Football friend" nonsense. Anyway, it's been a great series and somehow, the writing seems to have become even closer to the sixth form we remember, even as the stars start to look more and more Fonzie. We hope they'll do a new series, even if they are 40. The final episode sees Will on the verge of an absolute disaster and Jay having a real, not made-up, girlfriend.

tvBite, 4th August 2009

E4 commissions more episodes of critically acclaimed sitcom about four teenagers growing up in suburbia.

Written by John Plunkett. The Guardian, 4th August 2009

Anyone lucky enough to have taken part in the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme will remember the disappointment felt upon realising that it doesn't just involve going camping with actual real girls, but going out and doing good deeds. Will and the rest of The Inbetweeners learn this the hard way after Will starts a DofE scheme and ropes them into helping out at a nursing home. This act of community goodwill descends into Jay being caught copping a very good look at a young picture of an old dear. Oh dear. Deliciously vile.

The Guardian, 28th July 2009

If it hadn't been such a deathly week on the box, I might never have seen The Inbetweeners. I would never have seen it because it's a horrible title that implies a reality show about pre-op transsexuals, and because it's billed as a comedy series. It turned out to be Grange Hill with irony and swearing. The Inbetweeners are those awkward years betwixt kid and adolescent, that moment when you've just been given puberty but haven't learnt how to play it yet. In tele­vision terms, it's that gap between Torchwood and Skins, a vehicle for actors who look younger than they are.

What was astonishing was that it made me laugh. Not just once but quite a lot, repeatedly. The person I share my so-called life with put her head round the door and asked what that terrible noise was. Just me laughing, dear. "Well, watch something else, you're frightening the dog." On the face of it, there's nothing about The Inbetweeners that singles it out for mirth. The acting is junior-drama-school standard: loads of enthusiasm, little skill. The setup of a public schoolboy dumped into a comprehensive is hardly brilliant, but the script is tight and witty and filthy and doesn't sag. I think the key to it being sort of brilliant is that all TV comedians have a relentless arrested development and are pitifully juvenile. So when you see real adolescents telling jokes and being disgusting, it turns out to be actually funny. The main character, the public schoolboy, is a Mini-Me version of David Mitchell.

The rest of the cast are childish impressions of most of the celebrity guests on jokey quiz shows, which perhaps proves that comedy really is a young person's game, the younger the better. And just as youth is wasted on the young, so jokes are pathetic on the middle-aged.

A. A. Gill, The Sunday Times, 5th July 2009

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.

Jane Simon, The Mirror, 30th June 2009

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.

Will Dean, The Guardian, 30th June 2009

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...

Written by Dan Owen. Dan's Media Digest, 9th June 2009

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.

The Independent, 17th May 2009

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.

The Sun, 15th May 2009

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.

Written by Dan French. Digital Spy, 14th May 2009

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.

Keith Watson, Metro, 7th May 2009

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.

Written by Will Hurrell. Broadcast, 21st April 2009

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.

Simon Horsford, The Telegraph, 9th April 2009

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.

Emily Bell, Broadcast, 7th April 2009

The anti-Skins sitcom following a gang of social rejects at a comprehensive school, complete with crude humour galore and a host of acute and nostalgic observations as the boys embark on the joys of a geography field trip to Swanage.

This show beautifully plays on the ridiculous playground codes and conventions and hierarchies that tainted our youth. The perfect example of this is Jay, who in the first two minutes was bragging about his friend in Year 13. We all remember those days, where engaging in any minor form of interaction with an individual who arrived on this earth little more than 12 months before you increased your social status. Plus, the idea that the back seats of the school coach are reserved for 'the hard kids.' A classic quote from Will when suffered the age-old ejection: 'We don't have to move, we got here very early to secure these seats!'

Liam Smedley, TV Custard, 4th April 2009

The Inbetweeners' portrayal of dull suburbia is closer to the drab teen years most of us spent, rather than the decadent time we wished we spent.

Written by Will Dean. The Guardian, 3rd April 2009

A rollicking teen comedy, the show revolves around Will and his gang of geeky friends. Will's basically an (even) shorter David Mitchell: posh, calamity-stricken and with a tendency to lodge his foot somewhere in the vicinity of his tonsils. He - for those who skipped the first series - used to be educated privately, but is currently roughing it in a comprehensive thanks to his mum who, he said ,"hasn't scraped enough money together to send him to his old, frankly better school". I know, I know: what a nob, right? Well, yes - except for the fact that he's rather likeable - likeable to the audience, at any rate, if not to the female population of his school. In last night's episode, the class got sent off on a geography trip. Cue lots of Jolly-Boys-style misdemeanors and school-level smut.

Bit by bit, the series has plenty to recommend it. The acting's strong, especially from half-dozen or so main players. And it's properly funny, too. But - well, what to say? - it's just not Skins. There's no sex (aside from a failed attempt at fumbling from their teacher "paedo Kennedy"), no drugs (just a half-bottle of vodka that Will seems to think can be shared between - get this - the whole class). And, crucially, there's none of that knuckle-gnawing self-importance that characterises most teen show. Which, perhaps, is the problem: instead of laughing with the characters, we're laughing at them, at their naiveté, their youth. In fact, it's almost impossible to avoid the feeling that it has been written for adults, or, if not for adults, then by adults without much memory of adolescence. Most teenagers don't view themselves as quite the humorous bundle of awkwardness and charm that they seem here. That's something you develop later, a convenient way off shrugging of your own humiliating youth. Or maybe not, perhaps retrospect, like padded bras and pregnancy, arrives earlier with each generation.

Alice-Azania Jarvis, The Independent, 3rd April 2009

While this comedy is crude, and the pursuit of girls is often at the centre of the action, it works because, despite all that, you can sense that its heart is truly in the right place - Coming Of Age it ain't, in fact its closest relative is probably Peep Show.

Written by Anna Lowman. TV Scoop, 3rd April 2009

The arrival of the second series of The Inbetweeners, which charts the halpess misadventures, sexual and otherwise, of a bunch of suburban youths, is something to cheer. Thanks to the huggably hormonal presence of Simon Bird and Joe Thomas, The Inbetweeners catches the horny horrors of adolescence spot on without resorting to saying 'knob' every ten seconds. It's like Skins used to be.

Keith Watson, Metro, 3rd April 2009

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.

BBC Newsbeat, 2nd April 2009

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.

Low Culture, 2nd April 2009

The London Paper talks the star of The Inbetweeners.

Written by Malcolm Mackenzie. The London Paper, 2nd April 2009

Taking the place of Skins in the yoof slot, but not as archly/implausibly cool, The Inbetweeners returns for a second series. This is a show about the sort of kids who were in all of your classes but you can't remember them when they add you on Facebook. This first episode features two of school's most exciting events: a field trip and the arrival of a new girl. The geography trip to Swanage does nothing to enthuse the lads; the opposite is true of shiny new student Lauren. Will takes an immediate shine to her but it turns out she only has eyes for Simon. Such is life. Pervy jokes and pervier teachers mean that after watching this you'll be laughing - and longing for that crush from class 2B.

tvBite, 2nd April 2009

New series of the award-winning comedy about a group of awkward teens. Outrageous parties, drug-propelled japes and endless sexy romps. Frustration, boredom and unrequited crushes. The first is the Skins view of a teenager's life, the second is pretty much what everyone else experiences and is also the perspective of this sparkling comedy. In tonight's opener, Will and his mates expect a field trip to include success with Charlotte, the new girl at school. Wrong!

What's On TV, 2nd April 2009

A deserved hit when series one was shown last year, this sitcom returns for a second season. Revolving around four teenage lads who are neither cool nor popular, it's like a nerd's version of Skins. When new girl Lauren (Jayne Wisener) joins the school, Will (Simon Bird) makes a play for her but, embarrassingly, finds she prefers Simon (Joe Thomas).

Simon Horsford, The Telegraph, 2nd April 2009

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

Written by Michael Deacon. The Telegraph, 27th March 2009

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.

Paul Hirons, TV Scoop, 27th March 2009

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

Written by Julian Hall. The Independent, 27th March 2009

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.

Rob Buckley, The Medium Is Not Enough, 25th March 2009

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?

The Mirror, 5th November 2008

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

Written by Nellie Andreeva. Hollywood Reporter, 17th October 2008

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.

Joe McNally, The Independent, 19th May 2008

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.

Luke, TheCustard.tv, 3rd May 2008

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.

Tim Teeman, The Times, 2nd May 2008

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.

Simon Horsford, The Telegraph, 1st May 2008

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.

Radio Times, 1st May 2008

The first episode of new E4 comedy The Inbetweeners is rubbish. The second one is brilliant. This review is going to be confusing.

It's actually very funny. You just have to wait until episode two to find out. Once Will befriends a rag-tag bunch of mates - from cheeky Jay, who's 97 per cent haircut, to horny Simon, who thinks alcoholism is a turn-on - it's chuckles-a-go-go.

Aspiration has become the norm for teen TV. The O.C. made you want to smack yourself in the face because you didn't spend your A-levels having angst-ridden chats with girls so beautiful you'd eBay a relative for them to just breathe on you. Even the apparently 'real' Skins makes me feel cheated that my teens weren't a conveyer-belt of 17-year-old waifs begging to service me.

Sound like your 16th year? No. The Inbetweeners nails the disappointment, frustration and friendship perfectly. They don't have the talky emotion­-spew of Skins - they take the piss out of each other. It's not pretty - but it's real.

The London PaperMay 2008