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The Inbetweeners Series Two (April – 6 x 30 minutes produced by Bwark)

“Hilarious… American Pie mixed with Peep Show”
The Guardian

“Hilarious… It’s like the anti-Skins, but equally great”
Heat

What do you get when you have a group of people who are not cool enough to be popular and not geeky enough to be nerds? You get…The Inbetweeners.

Following the huge success of the first series, the award-winning The Inbetweeners is back with more mishaps, embarrassing attempts to pull and the vital adult initiation – to lose their virginity and become men.

Returning to E4 on 2nd April, the six part series voted the Best New British Television Comedy at the 2008 British Comedy Awards, continues where the first series left off. Centred at Rudge Park comprehensive school, four dysfunctional friends are all desperately trying to work out how to fit in.

Will (Simon Bird), is still trying to be part of the crowd, but now also has a new challenge: to raise the social standing of his new friends to ‘cool’ – it’s not going to work.

At his side is Simon (Joe Thomas) who is still hopelessly besotted with Carli D’Amato (Emily Head) and anything she thinks is cool he immediately goes along with. Jay’s (James Buckley) still boasting stories of impressive exploits and sexual conquests that are just a little too fantastical to believe. Making up the quartet is Neil (Blake Harrison), an easy going lad who is not exactly the brains of the outfit and whose dad is definitely not gay.

Over the six episodes, the lads attempt to assert their maturity in a clubbing trip to London. The French exchange student is a bit too much of a threat, and they endure the infamous sociology and geography field trip to Swanage in the hope of finding the legendary Swanage ‘MILF’. Work experience week sets up new challenges for Will and Neil and even the underage disco proves socially fatal for them. Facing new tests everyday they also have to deal with the day-to-day traumas of teenage life, families and exams.

Written and Executive Produced by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris for Bwark Productions, the show has gone on to win Best New Comedy & Best Male Newcomer for Simon Bird at The 2008 British Comedy Awards, he is also nominated for an RTS award for best comedy performance (against Peter Kay).

Damon and Iain are also co-producing ‘Free Agents’ with Big Talk Productions a sitcom for Channel 4 and producing ‘The Scum Also Rises’ a new sitcom for BBC2.

http://www.e4.com/inbetweeners

The Inbetweeners Cast List
Will Simon Bird
Jay James Buckley
Neil Blake Harrison
Simon Joe Thomas
Carli Emily Head
Mr Gilbert Greg Davies
Mark Donovan Henry Lloyd-Hughes

THE INBETWEENERS – Characters

WILL (Simon Bird)

Will McKenzie is on a bad run. His parents have divorced and, to compound matters, his (totally hot) mum has moved him out of an independent school and into a local comprehensive. Will’s last school did a good job preparing him for the outside world – he’s smart, confident, quick-witted and outspoken. Unfortunately for Will this isn’t the outside world, this is the sixth form at Rudge Park Comprehensive where all these attributes make the kids, and teachers, deeply suspicious of him. Through dogged determination (and a bit of stalking) Will has now made friends with Simon, Jay and Neil, who if anything are a little more tragic than him. Unfortunately he’s also made enemies of the sixth form nutter (Mark Donovan) and his psychotic head of year, Mr Gilbert.

SIMON (Joe Thomas)

Simon is Will’s closest friend at Rudge Park. Despite being coerced into looking after Will when he first arrived at school, Simon has warmed to him.

He sees Will as more on his level than his other mates. Someone he can talk to about more than just “clunge”, football and Playstation, even though he does spend most of his time droning on about his love for Carli D’Amato. It’s an unrequited love, obviously, but who knows, if Simon wasn’t such a loser around Carli maybe something could happen. However that’s about as big an “if” as you’re ever likely to find.

JAY (James Buckley)

Everyone had a mate like Jay Cartwright. The sort of friend that in later life you look back on and think “‘why did I hang around with him?”. A potty mouthed, verbal bully, Jay is constantly bragging about his sexual conquests and daring feats, although there seems to be a disturbing lack of evidence for his hyperbolic claims. He has a natural antipathy towards Will, mainly because Will has no hesitation in pulling Jay’s lies to pieces.

NEIL (Blake Harrison)

Neil Sullivan is the boy for whom the phrase “in a world of his own” was invented. Not exactly the brains of the outfit, Neil is always twenty seconds behind everything and everyone. But just when you think he’s really stupid he says something that almost makes sense. Much to Neil’s annoyance, his unconventional dad – a single, middle-aged man struggling to raise a family after his wife walked out on them – is the butt of the other’s crude jokes, who relentlessly cast aspersions on his sexuality just because he “wears tight shorts” and “plays badminton ona Tuesday”.

CARLI D’AMATO (Emily Head)

Carli is the gorgeous girl next door who Simon has had a crush on for as long as anyone can remember. Carli, like all girls her age, is more sophisticated than our hapless four, preferring guys just that bit older, at university, and with their own (not tiny and yellow) cars.

MR GILBERT (Greg Davies)

Mr Gilbert is the psychotic head of sixth form at Rudge Park. He’s one of those teachers who’s just a bit fed up with what for him has been a fairly thankless career. To say he doesn’t suffer fools would be an understatement; he doesn’t suffer anyone, and he gives Will a particularly tough ride for no other reason than he can.

MARK DONOVAN (Henry Lloyd-Hughes)

Donovan is the resident school psycho. He bullies his way through the new and the weak kids and is the on-off boyfriend of the most popular girl at school, Charlotte Hinchcliffe. Charlotte is inconceivably attracted to Will, a bittersweet triumph that puts our hero immediately on a collision course with Donovan.

The Inbetweeners Cast biogs:

Simon Bird (Will)

Simon was named Best Male Newcomer at the 2008 British Comedy Awards, and is the youngest male winner of any award in the event’s 18 year history. He is a regular performer on the live comedy scene, both as a stand-up (he was runner-up in the 2008 Chortle Student Comic of The Year competition) and with his sketch group The House of Windsor, whose last show, The Meeting, was a site-specific installation set in a boardroom. It received a clutch of five-star reviews and sold out its entire run at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival.

Joe Thomas (Simon)

Joe Thomas is a prolific comedy writer and writer-performer, developing original sitcom ideas with some of the UK’s top independent production companies and performing with his writing partners Jonny Sweet and Simon Bird (as House of Windsor). Jonny and Joe have been writing and performing comedy together since they met at Cambridge University in 2003 and were one of five featured acts on Freemantle’s International New Media venture Project V. They staged their first hour-long comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006 and were subsequently nominated for the Writer’s Guild Best Comedy Newcomer Award. They have since staged two more highly acclaimed comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

James Buckley (Jay)

James was just 11 years old when he appeared in his first West End play Whistle Down the Wind at the Aldwych theatre. Soon after this he was also cast in Les Miserables at the Palace Theatre. His television credits include 2001’s ‘Orrible with Johnny Vaughan, Skins, and new BBC sitcom Fresh. James attended the Performing Arts College in Essex and enjoys writing music and playing guitar with his band.

Blake Harrison (Neil)

During his time at East 15 Acting School Blake was involved in a number of theatre productions including Market Boy, The Good Person of Sichuan, On the Razzle and Richard III. He also played the part of Bob in The Accidental Lives of Memories at the White Bear theatre. More recently he has been involved in a short film Her Eyes Met with Mine.

Emily Head (Carli)

Emily has appeared several times at the Theatre Royal Bath with the Dorothy Colebourne School of Dance, including An Inspector Calls, Carousel and Fiddler on the Roof. Her television roles include The Invisibles (Grace) Doc Martin (Poppy) and Trial and Retribution (Natalie). Emily has won numerous local drama competitions including the prestigious Mid-Somerset Festival where she won Solo Shakespeare 2002 and Solo Acting 2003.

Ah well, it was for charity (apparently) and he wished me well so fair dos I guess. Another guy who I didn’t give anything to caused me to double-take – he looked just like Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) in his shit-scary 3:10 To Yuma role. “I promise you’re not in trouble,” he said, grinning. “How wrong you are,” came my inaudible reply.

All-in-all, I’m glad to be home.

Expect blogs on the new TV series “Being Human” and the film “Valkyrie” to follow shortly.

P.S. I was going to start talking Skins over the next few weeks but I missed the first episode and the first five minutes of the second episode I caught yesterday had me switch off the television and go to bed. No, I didn’t like it.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

A fantastic, vibrant, rags-to-riches love story. Check out my previous post for a little more on this gem and the trailer, below. Remember, it’s in cinemas now, so go see it!

Sunshine (2007)

Danny Boyle’s epic sci fi revolves around seven astronauts and their journey to reignite our dying sun by dropping their payload – a stellar bomb, into it. Sunshine is visually stunning but the characters are one-dimensional and for me, disappointing. Capa (Cillian Murphy – Breakfast on Pluto, The Wind That Shakes the Barley) does his best alongside Cassie (Rose Byrne – Damages, 28 Weeks Later), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, Cellular) and the rest of the edgy, bored crew. Some complained about the sudden pace and direction change in the last third of the film, although there’s no denying that the bomb room – where the actors are able to stand on any four sides of the cube without falling off, looks fantastic. Sunshine’s plot is very similar to Event Horizon (1997), starring Sam Neil and Laurence Fishburne.

Millions (2004)

Sandwiched between Boyle’s horror (which would spawn an unnecessary, but very competent sequel) and his sci fi Sunshine, Millions tells the story of two little boys Damian (Alex Etel) and Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) who discover a suitcase full of money. Millions is a colourful, funny and big-hearted tale lifted high above similar productions due to its warmth and detail. Ronnie (James Nesbitt), plays the boys concerned dad. Another stella soundtrack supports the film with a quality bit of Muse during the heist sequence.

28 Days Later… (2002)

28 Days Later put Cillian Murphy in the spotlight and Danny Boyle back on the map as he rebooted horror films in general. Danny Boyle’s “Infected” (rage-filled super fast monsters sometimes mistaken for zombies), have been emulated in movies (the Dawn of the Dead remake) and several video games (Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil 4) ever since 28 Days’ release but the originals remain most frightening over six years on.

Jim (Cillian Murphy) trudges through a staggeringly empty London before teaming up with Selena (Naomie Harris), Frank (an excellent performance by Brendon Gleeson) and Hannah, his daughter (now a musician who looks like Marilyn Manson but sounds like Avril Lavigne – no, I don’t understand either).
Visually 28 Days is superb, filmed almost entirely in digital and the ending in 35mm. A deserted London and scattered remnants of humanity really hit home and it all feels horribly plausible. Also the violence is truly disturbing and in parts, sickening.

Many consider the second half of the film to be weaker when we are taken out of London. Personally I like the second half a lot, from the dialogue dealing with existence to the beating rain following the film’s mid-point watershed. I like the desperation, the chase and the isolation when Jim is split from the group. I also like the soldiers and Sergeant Farrell’s rant about mankind only being around for the blink of an eye. I also (also, also!) reckon Christopher Eccleston gives an excellent performance as Major Henry West and the In a House, In a Heartbeat crescendoing music sequence of the final act is superb.

The Beach (2000/I)

Many thought The Beach a disappointment while environmentalists got hacked off when the production decimated Ko Phi Phi Lee beach to shoot what they considered to be a more accurate representation of paradise. I’d argue that The Beach is a good film, from Leonardo DiCaprio’s narration to his downward mental spiral. This also marked a turning point as Boyle cast DiCaprio rather than McGregor for the starring role of Richard. Plenty of rumours have bounced around over what Ewan has or hasn’t said, but it’d be awesome to get him and the rest of the Trainspotting cast together for another Danny Boyle-helmed Trainspotting sequel (see the video at the bottom of this post).

I’d agree with the guys at CineFiles (see bottom of post) who mention that little girls were probably expecting the heartthrob they’d seen in Titanic, only to get an entirely different animal – one who would go a bit bonkers during the course of the film, culminating in a neat video-game sequence. Incidentally I’m a big fan of DiCaprio’s work, in my opinion he gets better and better. See Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator or his superb performance in Blood Diamond if you don’t believe me.

A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

Ewan and Diaz team up for this patchy comedy. Some moments sparkle, others don’t. It’s certainly worth a watch anyway, if only for the karaoke scene and cool animation sequence near the end.
I’ll flesh this one out when I get my hands on another copy as I haven’t seen it in a couple of years.

Trainspotting (1996)

Based on Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name (written in phonetics, with dashes instead of speech marks), Trainspotting made Ewan McGregor a superstar and Danny Boyle the director of the day. Trainspotting is one of those fabulous British films that reminds the world what we can create when we put our minds to it. Or what Danny Boyle can create, haha.

One thing that irks me is how some believe this magnificent piece of cinema glorifies drugs. After first seeing this film I was revolted by the idea of sticking a needle in my arm, being so desperate that I’d hunt through mine and other people’s poo for suppositories and/or getting aids and a brain haemorrhage. Oh and then there’s the cold turkey scene with the dead baby crawling on the ceiling. No, I didn’t really get the glam part of the film. Perhaps I should watch it again? It’s my theory that the people who think Trainspotting says drugs are cool are the very same people who think that Slumdog casts India in a poor light, depicting it as one giant slum with zero merit. For a start, it doesn’t. It actually made me want to go and experience India for myself – more than ever before (and I’ve been talked to a lot about India in the last few years by family and friends). Second of all, it’s a film about someone who has grown up in a slum. Get it?!

Shallow Grave (1995)

Alex Law (Ewan McGregor), Juliet Miller (Kerry Fox) and David Stephens (Christopher Eccleston) are somewhat offensive flatmates looking for a forth. When their new resident ODs and pops his clogs in his room they discover his suitcase full of money (a recurring theme in Boyle films). Things get dark from hereon in, with the three opting to keep the money, but at what price? Which raises another question – what would you do? Shallow Grave is awesome due to it’s clever script and the chemistry between the three brilliant leads.

Danny Boyle Talks Trainspotting 2

An interesting short interview with Danny Boyle discussing Trainspotting 2, which he says will be very loosely based on Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting book sequel “Porno”.

The CineFiles – The Films of Danny Boyle

This is an awesome video where three Americans discuss all of Danny Boyle’s films up until Sunshine. It’s almost half an hour in length but well worth a watch if you’re interested in Danny Boyle’s films.

Slumdog Millionaire sees the slum-dwelling Jamal Malik (Dev Patel of Skins fame) as a contestant on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be A Millionaire?. As there have been many real-life instances in which professors and the like have cheated to get on the show in India, it’s been made considerably more difficult, with questions on advanced physics popping up early on. For this reason when Jamal starts to win, suspicions arise and the story of how he comes to know the answers unfolds. I’m gonna try and see this pretty sharpish because apart from being by one of my favourite directors it sounds like just the ticket to lift the spirits at this rather grim time of year.

Completely unrelated, here are two little clips of stand-ups talking about Australia and the Australian accent, courtesy of a Polish friend. Pretty funny stuff: