James Buckley says there’s no special reason ‘The Inbetweeners’ is still popular: “It’s just quite funny”

nme.com:

The Inbetweeners, telling NME that the coming-of-age sitcom is “bigger now than when we were actually making it”.Buckley starred as brash, braggadocious Jay Cartwright in the puerile comedy series about a high school friendship group who were “in between” their school’s cool kids and nerd contingent.

The show ran for three series between 2008 and 2010 on E4 before spawning two enormously successful spin-off movies that followed in 2011 and 2014.Reflecting on the show’s unflagging popularity ever since then, Buckley told NME: “I think it’s just because it’s quite funny – that’s it really.

It’s not particularly big or clever; some of it’s really silly. The whole ethos was we just wanted to make people laugh. We had this rule where we tried our hardest to make sure that something funny happened every 30 seconds.”Earlier this summer, TikTok creator Mathew Matos Gillingwater scored a viral hit with a hilarious video imagining “The Inbetweeners if they were Gen Z” but really, not much has changed for teenagers.

James’ wife, podcaster and vlogger Clair Buckley, pointed out that the show remains “true” to life, which is why it still resonates with new generations of teenagers. “Obviously, it will eventually become outdated but I think right now, and probably for a while, [it still captures] what school’s like – that’s what they all see and how they talk.”James also shared some thoughts on what his character Jay might be doing in 2024. “In my head, if the boys are now in their thirties, Jay would be quite successful and that would really annoy [Simon Bird’s character] Will,” he said. “Because Will would be like, ‘Well, that’s not fair.