Big Boys S3 (Channel Four)

Jack Rooke got back to his laptop to continue the story of Big Boys with the shows third instalment in 2025.

Big Boys has always been good, and always presents itself as a show written by someone born and bred in the beating heart of the UK, with an intricate understanding of its working classes and kitschy popular culture. Season Three carries on in this vein and is littered with the same working-class characters and working-class popular culture references. Rylan even makes an appearance.

As well as knowing the pop culture religion of the ordinary people of Britain, Rooke has an uncanny ability to present nostalgia for the 2010s in his sitcom. It’s nostalgia and a throwback for an era we forgot had any distinctive features. But when you’re reminded of the level of cringe that the spoken-word poetry movement generated – you remember how different a time 2015 actually was.

There are some incredibly hilarious comedy performances in Big Boys. Harriet Webb who plays Cousin Shannon probably provides the best of them. In a show that bears homage to the stupid, hilarious and eccentric ways working-class British people sometimes think, Webb is allowed to thrive. Some of her one liners are delivered masterfully and her upset at missing her “Q2” deadline to launch: “Shanalanagans Party Planners LTD Incorporated” is laugh out loud.

Season Three of Big Boys even plays with genre and form when the writer of the show appears in the finale - as himself. The entire series is underpinned by the real life tragedy of Rooke’s best friend Danny (played by Jon Pointing) taking his own life. What emerges when Rook confronts this sadness, is a real celebration of his friend and the brief time they spent together. The pathos of the show is authentic and balances out the slapstick and zany humour well.

The real success of Big Boys is that it has what every good sit-com has: a group of characters and character dynamics that you root for, believe in, and come to love.