No middle ground ... The Inbetweeners: The Movie, with (l to r) Emma Louise Cargill, Simon Bird (Will), Joe Thomas (Simon), Blake Harrison (Neil) and James Buckley (Jay). Photograph: Nicola DoveThe feature film-of-the-sitcom is one of the less heralded genres in cinema. Forty years ago, when Hollywood's vision of a low-budget hit was the cool and radical Easy Rider, the British film industry couldn't have been eulogising a less glamorous form of transport, when Hammer brought the sitcom On the Buses to the big screen.
The Inbetweeners MovieProduction year: 2011Country: UKDirectors: Ben PalmerCast: Blake Harrison, James Buckley, Joe Thomas, Simon BirdMore on this filmThat first On the Buses film made more than a million pounds, and sparked a gold rush. 1973 saw nine films based on sitcoms, including Love Thy Neighbour, Father, Dear Father and even For the Love of Ada. By the end of the decade, though, the notoriously thin quality of the adaptations meant the genre had become irrevocably tarnished.
But in 1997, the astonishing success of Bean, the cinematic adaptation of Mr Bean, proved TV comedies could still provide a rich seam of material – and make someone rich. Bean and Mr Bean's Holiday grossed more than $400m worldwide. Ali G Indahouse and Guest House Paradiso (based on Bottom) also made money. Even the lamentable Kevin & Perry Go Large took ?10m. The latest addition to this roll call is The Inbetweeners: The Movie.
The engagingly puerile, brilliantly plausible sitcom about four sixth-formers ("in between" school and adulthood) has sold more than 1.5m DVDs and finished its last series with an E4 record of 3 million viewers. Such a ready-made fanbase is not reason alone to make the film, says its producer Chris Young, but it's a good start. Although the budget is low (around ?3.5m), aspirations for the film are high. Writers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley talk of making a British equivalent of Ferris Bueller's Day Off or American Pie. Young stresses their intention to make "a standalone film" that people who've never seen the series can go to see and still get all the jokes. With the film set to open on 400 screens, the financial and artistic viability of the film-of-the-sitcom genre is about to be tested again.
We are on set in Magaluf in Majorca, which is doubling for Malia in Crete – the setting for The Inbetweeners' first lads holiday. The Inbetweeners: The Movie echoes the riposte made by the nerdy narrator Will in the second series to the suggestion made by Simon – the sensitive, sensible one of the four friends, though those concepts are relative – that they use a school trip to Swanage to try and cop off with the local girls or buy some booze. "Everything we're shit at, except by the seaside," Will says. Malia became the setting because it's a mecca for partying adolescents – during their research in the resort, the writers came across groups of up to 150 kids from a single college.
The real Magaluf, however, is a kind of hell. Scandavian stag parties and squaddies on leave from Afghanistan crawl the lapdance bars and "Fun Pubs" which, frankly, look no fun at all. In the EastEnders karaoke pub next to the cast's €8-a-night hotel, a bloke in a Spongebob Squarepants costume was seen fighting a penguin. Well, a bloke in a penguin costume.
Simon Bird, who plays Will (also known by the nickname with which fans salute him everywhere he goes: "Briefcase Wanker!") recalls discovering one pub "full of grown men playing a drinking game that involved having toilet roll up your bum. They light it and you have to down your pint before the fire reaches your bum." His horror was complete when he realised the participants were from the film's crew.
Like many great British sitcoms (Dad's Army, The Likely Lads, Only Fools and Horses), The Inbetweeners is essentially about losers forced together by circumstance (in this case, the sixth form) and their camaraderie in the face of failure. The boys' attempts to become cool (by losing their virginity or buying "spliff puff") invariably end in very English embarrassment. (Jay is caught masturbating in an old people's home; Will craps himself – literally – in an exam.) Fans relate to the hilarious, touching way it captures the friendships forged at school – despite (or because of) the constant banter. The friends mercilessly tease Neil about his dad being gay (on the grounds that he plays badminton) and constantly tell Will how they fantasise about his mum while masturbating.
Morris and Beesley have an impeccable pedigree in modern comedy. They worked with big names such as Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais as producers on The 11 O'Clock Show. Morris was a commissioning editor at Channel 4 for Peep Show and Phoenix Nights and they wrote two episodes of Flight of the Conchords. They cite Alan Partridge as their "touchstone" but also cite the late John Sullivan's Dear John, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and Fawlty Towers as influences. "I remember seeing the On the Buses film when I was 10," Beesley adds, "and thinking: 'This is the funniest film I've ever seen!'"
The Inbetweeners has a ribald humour in the tradition of Donald McGill's postcards, though, rather than a relationship to Peep Show or Phoenix Nights. Bird, as Will, spends the entire morning's filming in Magaluf having suncream rubbed on his back by Simon (Joe Thomas), who is secretly tracing the outline of a large penis on his back. As usual, the dialogue is littered with words like "clunge", "spazz", "Kraut", and the greeting "hello benders!" – language more politically correct viewers probably hoped had disappeared with Mind Your Language and Robin Askwith. But this, they all argue, is the way schoolboys are.
In an early draft of the script, Morris explains, the characters were older. "But it didn't work because they just sounded offensive. To deny that teenagers use those terms would be wrong. They haven't worked out that using those words in the adult world is totally inappropriate. We're watching as guilty observers and it is quite funny."
"They're there to be laughed at," insists James Buckley, who plays the fantasist Jay. "When Jay's talking about a car full of girls as a muff wagon, you're thinking: 'You are so stupid.'" The ostentatious insults that form the bulk of the programmes jokes – and many of which come from Jay – are fully scripted. Buckley says the writers are forever correcting him for mixing up a "clunge" with a "gash" or a "vag". "To Sir With Love," Bird says, "never had that problem."
The four actors are in their mid-20s but their camaraderie is exactly the same as their characters'. The dynamics function like a band. Simon is the gregarious, garrulous lead singer; a Simon Le Bon. Jay is the unpredictable guitarist, Will the swotty keyboard player and Neil (played by Blake Harrison) the dumb drummer. In fairness, the others concede Harrison is the one least like his character.
Everyone admits they are aware of the film-of-the-sitcom's poor track record and its pitfalls. But Young says that, apart from a few spectacular location shots and some lenses used by Martin Scorsese, any pressure to make it "more like a film" has been resisted. "Even the six-week shooting time is the same," he says. The film begins with the boys' last day at school, but is not a rites-of-passage piece. "Damon and Iain's first priority at all times is to make it as funny as possible," Joe Thomas says. "I don't think we can over-emphasise how immature Damon and Iain are for two men in their mid- to late 30s," Bird adds.
The question of whether the film signifies the end of The Inbetweeners is very much the elephant in the room. The four actors would clearly love to do more and at times seem perilously close to denial that the film represents the end of an era. The significance of the boys leaving school – which is what joined them together – doesn't seem to have quite sunk in. Buckley even argues the four teenagers "could just as well have been four blokes down the pub" and so it could continue: "I don't think The Inbetweeners will ever change 'cause men don't really." The writers – the puppet masters – are less equivocal though. "More than any series we've done, this feels like the last chapter," Beesley says.
Morris accepts the boys could be reunited for, say, a wedding, but says: "Part of the charm of the show is the awfulness of the things they say. And the justification they don't know any better. If they were adults and they talked like that, you'd just say: 'Grow up!'"
Neither writer looks very happy about the end of The Inbetweeners – even though they are responsible. "We've been through a lot together," Beesley says, slightly uncomfortably. "It was our first sitcom and their first show. I got married and my children were born while I was making this show."
"The trouble is," Morris says, "as hellish as filming is, I adore the four of them and Damon. I'd do anything for them. And the more we do it, the more I enjoy it."
Taking the step up to a movie will launch The Inbetweeners into the mainstream while expediting its demise. Plans for two Christmas specials have been abandoned – partly because the film has superseded them. The writers evidently feel Channel 4 took them for granted. "They're not exactly beating our door down," Morris mutters.
Chris Young agrees the four stars may not have come to terms with the fact that the next few days' filming could be their last together. "It is quite difficult to take on board. When I go to my local Co-op on the Isle of Skye, the woman at the till says: 'God, episode three! Hilarious!' To have that currency across the nation is very difficult to find. Doing The Inbetweeners is practically all they've ever known."
He recalls when the four members of the cast arrived on location and were " a bit moany". "I said 'I'm 50. I'll tell you now, this might be as good as it ever gets. So for fuck's sake enjoy it.'" It's what adults always tell their kids: school really is the best time of your life.
The Inbetweeners is released on 19 August. Jim Shelley is the TV critic of theDaily Mirror
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