The growing relationship between two young men, one gay one straight, makes for a genuinely uplifting, witty sitcom
Jack’s mum, Peggy, is busy in his university accommodation, reproducing his bedroom at home as best she can. She got the idea from Paul O’Grady’s programme about rehoming animals from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. This is Jack’s second attempt at student life and they are hoping he will manage to stay the course this time.
Jack Rooke’s new six-part comedy, Big Boys (Channel 4), based on his autobiographical stage shows, centres on – yes – a character called Jack (Derry Girls’ Dylan Llewellyn), who as a teenager is facing a devastating loss. “It’s shit,” says the narrator, voiced by Rooke, “when he’s 57 and it’s your dad and he’s the only one.” The opening minutes of the first episode are a collage of those surreal early days of bereavement. The odd thoughts, the lasagnes and platitudes offered by kind people who don’t quite know what to say, the comfort telly and the comfort eating. Jack and Peggy (Camille Coduri, whose tearfully caught breath at one point nearly undid me) see each other through. “We’d stuck together during dad’s illness like Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. But, really, we were sad. Like Eamonn and Ruth.”
