If December is the month of tinsel-tinged excess and winching yourself into shapewear, then surely grey, fuzzy January is all about comforts: comforting clothes, comforting food, comforting telly.
Luckily Big Boys is back for a second season, and as comfort levels go, it’s up there with being wrapped in a teddy bear hoodie while someone strokes your hair and feeds you hot buttered toast.
When it aired in 2022, Big Boys won fans instantly, but for those who missed it, here’s a quick recap. The show is a coming-of-age story from award-winning comedian and writer Jack Rooke, focused on his early years at Brent Uni in the aftermath of his dad’s death.
Grief-stricken, tip-toeing out of the closet, and nurturing an Alison Hammond obsession, Jack (Dylan Llewellyn, Derry Girls) enrols at Brent, sharing digs with lairy but loveable Danny King (Jon Pointing) from Margate. He soon realises Danny is fighting his own struggles, and the unlikely pair become each other's life raft as they navigate the wild waters of fresher life.
They quickly form a group with fellow students Corinne (Izuka Hoyle), so nerdy she makes Hermione Granger look like a Berghain raver, and Yemi (Olisa Odele), gay, Nigerian and far too cool for school.
With the campus being 10 minutes from home, Jack’s matriarchal family are also ever-present. There’s mum Peggy (Camille Coduri), a megamix of the UK’s greatest Huns; cousin Shannon (Harriet Webb) with a mouth as big as her heart; and his chain-smoking nan, Nanny Bingo (Annette Badland) who is Jack’s biggest supporter.
The second series starts with a bang. Quite literally; an appendage is poked through a glory hole straight into hapless Jack’s eye. “Were you trying to have sex at your dead dad’s 60th birthday party?” Corinne asks as Danny wraps him in a proud hug.
The answer is, of course, yes. Jack is young, newly out and feeling frisky. His flirting prowess, or rather, lack of it, makes for excellent viewing, from drooling over his lecturer to Grindr trysts that involve NSFW garden gnomes.
Meanwhile, Danny goes from chasing girls to turning the gang’s shabby blue shed into the loving home he never had. We find out more about Danny this time around. In the first series, Rooke skims over his best friend’s upbringing (frankly Dickensian), but the second instalment puts some skeletons back in the picture.
Rooke artfully pulls back Danny’s sunny exterior to reveal the deeply hurt and lost soul beneath – yet one that’s never far from the next LOL. Before propositioning freshers, he asks Jack; “Have you douched? If you're gonna be mating, you gotta get excavating”. There’s banter, but it’s boosting, not bashing. Danny is masculine without being toxic, a rareness that becomes apparent when he does work experience at a lad’s mag.
The series’ MVPs goes to two characters: Shannon, confirmed pregnant after uploading her morning sickness to Facebook (I mean, why bother with a GP?), and Yemi, who segues from achingly cool fashion student into the gang’s house mother, protecting his ducklings.
If the first series of Big Boys was about finding your feet, the second highlights the power of chosen families.
Amid the tapestry of 2010s references – JLS condoms, 3G, chirpsing (an olden days term for flirting), the ice bucket challenge (ugh) – Rooke masterfully weaves snippets of youthful exploits with moments of real tenderness and startling maturity. Big Boys is like if Sex Education and The Inbetweeners had a baby, only better.
There’s a lot of love, there’s a lot of laughs, there’s some cringing and watching through your fingers. More than anything, there is kindness by the beer pong-table load.
While some scenes cover tough topics like grief, shitty parents and mental health, Rooke manages to handle them sensitively and always ends things on a buoyant note. I hope there's more to come. We need to watch these Big Boys grow.
