Joe Gilgun interview

'I can be underestimated - I'm not an idiot'.

Brassic, series 2 episode 1 review

This madcap comedy caper is endearing but exhausting.

Brassic series two review

Vinnie and the gang decide to rob a circus, as Joseph Gilgun's hit comedy - part-Shameless, part-Ocean's Eleven - returns for a second run.

Joe Gilgun: 'Stealing all day is hard graft'

In my experience working-class people are f***ing heroes," Joe Gilgun tells me from behind a cloud of vape smoke.

Joe Gilgun's Shameless successor is still joyriding through rural Lancashire at a breakneck pace. This week's wild ride involves a raid on a rival weed grower's farm and an encounter with Erin's on-the-run brother Ronnie. Plus Dominic West is back as Vinnie's hilariously self-involved GP, Dr Cox.

Brassic is a new comedy from Shameless writer Danny Brocklehurst and actor Joe Gilgun (Woody in This Is England). Vinnie (Gilgun), sharp, witty, bipolar, is first seen wanting to jump off a bridge in the fictional northern town of Hawley, then launching into a Trainspotting-esque spiel ("Fuck the middle class, fuck the Guardian", etc). Vinnie thinks that life is "about having your mates, having a laugh, just finding a way to survive". Duly, this week's opening two episodes involved him, his best mate, Dylan (Damien Molony), and their gang becoming embroiled in hectic, caper-strewn plots encompassing everything from the kidnapping of Shetland ponies via dealing with underground fatbergs to hostile crime bosses.

Deeper themes lurk in Brassic, not least Vinnie's condition (Gilgun has bipolar disorder in real life), and Dylan's partner, young mum, Erin (Michelle Keegan), refusing to go along with the culture of extended adolescence, at one point acidly remarking to Vinnie that there appeared to be "three of them" in her and Dylan's relationship. "If it is, I'm the one getting the least sex", quipped Vinnie. On this showing, Brassic is funny, scratchy, surprising (Dominic West shows up as a useless, self-absorbed doctor), and promises to get darker.

TV review: Brassic, series 1 episode 1

The ongoing plot looks intriguing as well with Gilgun's narration informing us at the end of the episode that this was the moment that everything changed for him, and I certainly plan to stick around and find out just how that happens.

Why 'Brassic' is going to be your next TV obsession

It's This Is England meets The Inbetweeners - with added Michelle Keegan.

Brassic review

This caper about a gang of friends creating their own entertainment on this and that side of the law brings to mind the best of Shameless.