Full of teenage boys making fools of themselves, the final series of Williams’s clever, moving comedy is completely satisfying … especially the boyband song about psychedelics
Liam Williams says this is likely to be the last series of Ladhood (BBC Three), “as I have simply run out of memories”. I will be sad to see the back of it, because he has turned those memories into consistently great TV. The Streets feature heavily on its soundtrack, and Ladhood feels like a fitting companion to their first two albums in particular – albeit one with a bit less nightlife and a bit more moaning about parents, pocket money and a father who is addicted to sudoku.
As ever, this semi-autobiographical comedy – although its humour pinballs around slapstick and despair – switches between the lives of adult Liam, now 34, in a rut and wondering how he ended up like this, and teenage Liam, 18, preparing for his A-levels and being encouraged to apply for Oxbridge by his school and his parents. One is at the start of something; the other is at the end. It meets in the middle with a peculiarly entertaining sort of bleakness, and it bows out without sacrificing any of its surly irony or mordant wit.
