Featured Image Credit: Channel 4
Topics: The Inbetweeners, Channel 4, TV and Film
Joe Harker
Some fans of The Inbetweeners have been expressing concern over something they think might scupper the reboot if and when we get the new series.
The popular Channel 4 comedy ran on TV between 2008 and 2010, which was followed up with a couple of movies and ever since then, people have been waiting to see whether they'd ever bring it back.
The good news is we finally seem to be getting a return as The Inbetweeners creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley said they were 'plotting more adventures for our four favourite friends (ooh, friends)'.
It sounds like the original quad squad of Joe Thomas, Simon Bird, James Buckley, and Blake Harrison are coming back, and there's plenty of excitement over the most solid news of more Inbetweeners to come.
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If it's good then it's more of what we love, but if it doesn't turn out so well, then the original series is still one of the best and funniest comedies ever made, so what could go wrong?
According to some fans of The Inbetweeners, they're worried the new version will be spoiled because they'll make it 'woke' and we'll get some kind of sanitised, politically correct version which would never dare call someone a 'bus w**ker' or throw a frisbee into a disabled woman's face.
For those unaware of the term, 'woke' used to mean being aware of racial or social injustice but has since morphed into a pejorative for pretty much anything someone doesn't like.
Basically anything can be woke these days, all it needs is someone to hate it without being able to adequately articulate why, so obviously there are people moaning that they'll probably ruin The Inbetweeners by making it 'woke'.
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In the past, there have been some more critical re-evaluations of The Inbetweeners which have claimed it wasn't that funny after all, and the offensive jokes weren't worth it.
On the other hand, plenty of the show's fans will argue that The Inbetweeners made sure the boys stayed the butt of the joke, the possibly offensive things they said and did were an accurate reflection of how teenagers behaved and you weren't meant to support what they were doing.
Given the calls to bring it back over the years, the show has hardly been one most would prefer to leave in the past.
Still, all wokes aside, the question of what kind of humour they'll be going for now the boys are no longer awkward teenagers navigating the final years of school does hang over The Inbetweeners reboot.
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The characters having grown up a bit might end up limiting some of what they can say or do, them greeting each other with a 'morning, benders' might have worked when they were kids, but now the characters will be around 40 it may not be quite so fitting.
Buckley discussed this issue in 2018 with Digital Spy, saying: "I think that when The Inbetweeners was around, everyone understood the context – that they were kids.
"There used to be a sympathy, where you could almost forgive them, because you can't really have a go at someone for being stupid – that's not really their fault."
It's not going to be a show about four teenagers in school because the cast has aged far beyond that, but The Inbetweeners return has four leads who have great chemistry with each other as well as skilled writers in the show's creators, so there's every chance it'll be great when we get it.
We'll just have to wait and see.