Television series

The Inbetweeners

Four sixth-formers with zero social capital and infinite self-belief bumble through British adolescence: college crushes, disastrous holidays, humiliations both self-inflicted and inherited from family. It's crude, quotable and merciless, built on the gap between how the boys see themselves and how everyone else does. Funniest if you remember being seventeen and useless; for anyone squeamish about cringe comedy, this will be a long thirty minutes.

TVMaze rating7.7

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Peep Show2003

Same DNA of male social catastrophe, filtered through two even more pathetic Londoners and a POV camera that makes every bad decision feel inescapable. Sharper, sadder, just as filthy.

But The claustrophobic first-person camera style takes getting used to, and the humiliation is even more relentless with nowhere to look away.

Peep Show poster

Sex Education2019

A gentler, more generous take on the same teenage terror of sex and social standing, with real warmth under the awkwardness. Great if you want the laughs without quite so much cruelty.

But It's kinder and more earnest than The Inbetweeners — if you liked the nastiness, this might feel a bit soft.

Sex Education poster

Derry Girls2018

Swap English suburbia for 90s Derry and boys for girls, but the engine's identical: a tight, ridiculous friend group making everything worse for themselves. Faster, warmer, and just as quotable.

But Northern Irish politics and Troubles-era setting sit under the comedy — a slightly different flavour if you want pure teen farce.

Derry Girls poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Diner1982

Same structural engine as The Inbetweeners — banter as armour against sexual and social terror — decades earlier and an ocean away, proving the anxiety is universal, not generational.

A group of young American men in 1959 talk endlessly about girls, sport and each other to avoid admitting they're terrified of growing up. Gorgeous, funny, quietly devastating dialogue.

But Nothing much 'happens' by modern comedy standards, and there's no toilet humour or crudeness at all — a slower, more mournful register.

Diner poster
More like this (6)

Skins2007

Same era, same drinking-and-shagging British teen chaos, but played mostly straight rather than for laughs — darker, sexier, more consequences.

But It takes itself more seriously and can tip into melodrama; less interested in being funny than in being provocative.

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Freaks and Geeks1999

American cousin to the same social-ladder anxiety, with a similarly hopeless friend group and a killer eye for how brutal high school hierarchies really are.

But Cancelled after one season, so you get attached and then it just stops — no ending, no closure.

Freaks and Geeks poster

Superbad2007

One filthy, panicked night in the life of two desperate virgins trying to buy booze and lose it before college. Same horny-loser energy, condensed into two hours.

But American high school setting and broader gross-out jokes trade some of the specifically British class comedy for bigger, louder gags.

Superbad poster

American Pie1999

The teen-sex-comedy blueprint everything since owes a debt to — earnest, filthy, and surprisingly sweet about the gap between bravado and terror.

But Some of the gags have aged badly, and the pacts-and-bets structure feels much more formulaic now than it did then.

American Pie poster

Fresh Meat2011

Same social disasters, older bodies, new setting — university instead of sixth form, with a sharper, weirder ensemble and just as many spectacular own-goals.

But Six characters instead of four means less focus, and it never quite matches the tight chemistry of the original foursome.

Fresh Meat poster

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia2005

Identical comic machinery — every scheme a friend-group disaster of their own making — just aged the characters into their thirties and stripped out any trace of sympathy.

What the Inbetweeners lads might become if they never grew up: same self-inflicted humiliation among a tight, awful friend group, cranked up to gleeful sociopathy.

But There's no innocence left in these characters — if part of what you liked was the boys' underlying sweetness, this has none.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia poster

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