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.