The Inbetweeners was a show that aired on E4 from 2008-10 and was created by Jimmy’s friends Damon Beesley and Iain Morris.
A 2-hour documentary “reunion” special was broadcast on January 1st 2019 on C4 (filmed December 18th 2018, see Instagram image, below).
The Inbetweeners: Fwends Reunited
Before I go into more detail – the cast, crew, Producers, Production Companies, Director etc. can all be seen listed on Comedy.co.uk.
The 4 main characters were:
- Will – Simon Bird
- Jay – James Buckley
- Simon – Joe Thomas
- Neil – Blake Harrison
The format had a studio audience of cast members who seemed to be slowly getting drunk and slightly bemused by what was going on. “Simon” was stuffed in a suitcase, 4 superfans were brought on to take part in a quiz, Katherine Ryan (no prior link to the show whatsoever, to my knowledge) popped on at the end dressed as a schoolgirl…and the tabloids pretty much ran a hatchet piece on it all.
There were some VT segments and those were the only parts that diehard fans seemed to like.
Criticisms of the format included the 4 actors not looking like they wanted to be there and it being “the Jimmy Carr show”. Many said Greg Davies (in the audience) should have hosted.
Part of the problem was that the fans had been excited about seeing it, the 4 guys had been excited to be involved – but no one expected or liked the format. With all due respect to Greg with the long list of issues raised I doubt he could have made it any better.
But we need to step back and look at this objectively – because Reddit, Twitter (as it was then) and so on heaped most of the blame on Jimmy. Even though all he was doing was what the Producers wanted him to do.
As someone who had never watched the show, I actually found it interesting to see snippets of some of the cringiest bits and didn’t think it was that bad (apart from the fan quiz bit). But the real fans didn’t like the clips, because they knew it all word for word. What everyone really wanted to see, apparently, was the 4 guys telling stories.
Afterwards everyone involved went quiet and no blame was apportioned by anyone that had worked on the show.
Bottom line – the format was down to the Production Company. Everyone else (on the stage and in the audience) was “hired” and did what was asked of them.
Why Jimmy?
I can see exactly why Jimmy was chosen, to host, because:
- He’d co-hosted a radio show with Iain Morris, on XFM, for 5 years (see here). The tweet (further down this post) has Iain saying that, without that radio show, there would not have been an Inbetweeners.
- 6 of Jimmy’s 8 DVD releases were Executive Produced by Damon and Iain (here).
- In 2011 Jimmy had been at the Inbetweeners movie prem (here) and, in 2017, he’d talked up Damon’s White Gold project at JFL (here).
- As seen on this Reddit thread he appeared briefly in the 1st movie and S2 Ep6 a Jimmy Carr poster was on the wall of Simon’s bedroom (tweet below).
There was a lot of history there between Jimmy and the creators and he’d raved about the show from it first being broadcast, back in 2008.
Although Greg was hosting Taskmaster, in 2018 it was still on Dave (now U&Dave) and not the hit it would go on to become on C4 (meaning, as a host, he was very much the “less experienced” pair of hands in 2018).
James Buckley’s perspective
While looking up all of the details I came across this 2021 James Buckley interview on YouTube (scroll down this post). I’ll paraphrase it, for anyone that hasn’t got 10 minutes to spare (but I’d recommend it).
He mentions early on that they were all busy with other projects, hadn’t been told what was going to happen and felt it was rushed.
After watching the show (and seeing the complaints) I was very much of the opinion that everyone had forgotten that the 4 guys are ACTORS. They were funny in the show because they were ACTING out someone else’s funny lines and scenarios. Actors don’t necessarily have sparkling media personalities and this seemed to have been overlooked when the format was being devised.
This is borne out, in the video, by James saying that he felt he came across as a moron, because he didn’t have the personality to be an entertainer on that stage.
He’d been excited to hear that Jimmy was on board but then struggled to cope with being on the receiving end of his quick wit and found himself just getting roasted, with no response.
He said he didn’t blame the Production Company as the 4 of them were awkward and shy (6 minutes mark) and not naturally talk show people.
At around 6 min 30 he says that, very early on, he’d said to Jimmy that he was not that kind of guy and that Jimmy would have to carry them – which is “possibly why it seemed like the Jimmy Carr show”.
He comes across as a lovely bloke. And I couldn’t help but agree with everything that he said.
See also this post about an Inbetweeners Top 10 Moments show from 2011.
Images, Tweets and Video
This picture from the set seems to indicate that the recording was December 18th 2018.
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