Big Boys season two overview: Sweet, sensitive misfit comedy is something to be savoured

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It’s 2014: the mysterious age of the ice bucket problem, the Scottish independence referendum, and Alison Hammond on Strictly. It’s an period of “misogyny disguised as banter”, and a costume that may be gold and white however would possibly be blue and black. It’s additionally the world of Big Boys, a Channel 4 comedy about misfit college students on the fictional Brent University, which is returning for a candy, sensitive second season.

The massive boys (each literal and metaphorical) are again: Jack (Dylan Llewellyn) – a fictional proxy for the present’s creator, Jack Rooke –who is now “out” to his household, and his greatest good friend Danny (Jon Pointing), a mature scholar who is recovering from a psychological well being episode that derailed his research. And we’re additionally reunited with their cohabitants in crummy college lodging – Yemi (Olisa Odele), a flamboyant vogue scholar, and Corinne (Izuka Hoyle), a cynical, mental Scot drifting right into a “will they, won’t they” relationship with geezer Danny. Together they kind an advert hoc household unit, compensating for the deficiencies (or excesses) they skilled at residence.

The first season of Rooke’s comedy primarily consisted of two simultaneous coming-of-age tales. On the one hand, Jack, coming to phrases together with his life as a homosexual man, and on the opposite, Danny opening up about his expertise of despair. The query the second collection poses is whether or not accepting your self is solely a cease on the journey… and in that case, what’s the vacation spot? “Being gay isn’t just loving c**k,” Jack despairs, as he continues to wrestle romantically (“It’s quite a prerequisite,” Corinne responds drily).

While Jack strikes in the direction of consummating his wishes (a course of that features studying self-help books about anal intercourse), Danny struggles together with his emotions for Corinne. Even a succession of ladies (together with, if my eyes don’t deceive me, Maddy from the primary collection of The Traitors) can’t distract him from his cunning flatmate. To complicate issues, Danny’s obnoxious father (performed by Marc Warren, who condemns London as nothing however “traffic and Pret”) arrives again on the scene.

At its coronary heart, Big Boys is a paean to acceptance, to residing your fact. “First year of uni was where I started to discover myself,” the disembodied voice of the grownup Jack (narrated by the true Jack) publicizes. Where Channel 4’s Fresh Meat (created by Succession supremo Jesse Armstrong, lest we overlook) was an try to skewer the category dynamics of Britain’s non-Oxbridge universities, Big Boys navigates its method by trendy sexual politics like a drunk Magellan.

Life in “this over-expensive demi-paradise known as Brent”, as an property agent describes the world, is a maze of tangled interpersonal relations. But on the coronary heart of proceedings is a basic sitcom dynamic between 4 associates (and Katy Wix’s over-eager scholar rep, Jules) that retains issues humorous, even because the present grapples with themes like abortion, alcoholism, household abuse and extra.

That mentioned, whereas it retains some sitcom components that really feel referential to the group dynamics of, say, Friends or Cheers, Big Boys is nonetheless pretty distinctive on the earth as a mainstream, non-didactic portrait of LGBT+ lives. For youngsters outgrowing the vanilla panorama of Netflix’s Heartstopper, Big Boys provides a extra rum-and-raisin portrait of commencement into maturity. Grief, heartbreak, disappointment: the emotional nuances afforded to the lengthy canon of heterosexual literature are all current right here.

The performances by Llewellyn, Odele, Hoyle and Wix (not to point out Camille Coduri as Jack’s mum and Harriet Webb as his cousin Shannon) are rendered in vivid, technicolour strokes, however the comedic focus is Pointing’s Danny. The surprising tenderness of “lad” tradition, because it intersects with the various actuality of contemporary greater schooling, is something that no present captures higher.

“Britain before sweet chilli sauce was s***,” Shannon publicizes, “and now it’s bearable.” This imaginative and prescient of center England – one which is loving, open-minded, and quietly self-deprecating – is all too uncommon on our screens. Sweeter than candy chilli (and extra nourishing, too), Jack Rooke’s comedy is something to be savoured.