Big Boys’ sucker-punch final season proves it’s one of the finest British comedies of the past decade
There is an old joke, dating back to the mists of the 19th century, about a man who visits his doctor, gripped by the terrible dread of existence. The doctor prescribes a simple remedy: the circus is in town and its lead clown is the toast of Europe. Go see him and your despair will be healed. The twist, of course, is that the man is that clown. Sometimes the laughter is a mask; sometimes the comedy gives way to tragedy. That, too, is the fundamental truth that allows the sitcom format to occasionally elevate itself to true art, as in the final season of Jack Rooke’s superb Big Boys on Channel 4.
University life is coming to an end for Jack (Dylan Llewellyn). He and his fellow “blue shed” residents – charismatic ladies’ man Danny (Jon Pointing), his powerful girlfriend Corinne (Izuka Hoyle), and flamboyant fashionista Yemi (Olisa Odele) – will soon say goodbye to Brent Uni and enter the big, scary real world. But before that they’ll, once again, have to navigate academic and career decisions, as well as the usual dollop of family and identity crises. Can Danny and Corinne’s nascent romance survive the turbulence of student life? Will Yemi’s bold professional ambitions be fulfilled? And when will Jack find his calling, and end up being the Jack who, a decade later, is writing this show?
On the face of it, Big Boys looks a fairly conventional sitcom, in the vein of Fresh Meat or Community. An odd couple – one gay, one straight; one anxious, one confident – discover their similarities and learn how their differences complement each other. And it is that kind of show. “I don’t think you ever realised,” the older Jack narrates to Danny, “you were the only older male figure I ever loved.” It is a sweeping, cinematic love story – a platonic romance for the ages. And yet while it was doing this on the surface, playing with conventions established in the broad comic traditions of The Inbetweeners and People Just Do Nothing, it was also, slyly, telling a different story. Not a coming-of-age story, but a story of coming to an end.
The bait and switch of Big Boys has been to make viewers think they are watching a show about Jack, when really it’s a love letter to Danny. Jack grows up to be Jack. We know that – there’s no tension. As for Danny? Sweet, sensitive, depressive Danny – it’s not so simple. And throughout its three-series run, Big Boys has known just when to pull back the farce and lace the show with a bittersweet realism. “I love you all,” Yemi tells his flatmates, as he prepares to leave for Paris. “But we’re going to grow and find new friends.” Life, after all, is more complex than a performance poetry recital; its decisions more difficult than choosing whether to write your thesis on anal sex or the Scottish independence referendum.
This might not read like the review of a funny show (and Big Boys is funny, as fans of its first two seasons will know). And that’s because this final chapter of Rooke’s semi-autobiographical saga is an emotional sucker punch. Only the rarest of comedic shows can manage that transcendent moment, where the quest for laughs is shelved in favour of some emotional – existential even – truth. Think the final moments of Blackadder, the heartbreaking vigil of Seymour in Futurama, or the slow shot of numb surgeons after Henry Blake goes down over the Sea of Japan in M*A*S*H. It is comedy that exquisitely captures the interplay between light and dark, that begs us not to dispose too quickly of our feelings. “Wait,” Jack implores Danny. It is an instruction to his audience, too.
Moving between comedy and drama is tricky. Your audience arrives for the farce – for Katy Wix’s tragic student rep Jules or Harriet Webb’s effervescently delusional Shannon – but it’s the moments of poignancy that last longer. “There’s nothing too big that we can’t fix,” Jules tells Danny. It is a moment of naïve optimism in a show that always acknowledges, head on, how irreparably messy life can be. But at times, great television can arrive at truths that feel like existential answers. And this last goodbye to Big Boys – one of the finest British comedies of the past decade – feels like one of those moments.
