Big Boys

TV Diary: Ian Katz

Wake up to an item on Radio 4’s Today about the shortage of HRT drugs. Women are resorting to trading them illegally in car parks. The Govern­ment has had to appoint an “HRT tsar”. A pharmaceutical executive explains it is partly to do with supply chain problems but mostly the result of a surge in demand triggered by a Channel 4 documentary presented by Davina McCall last year. 

Now Davina has made a follow-up film and people are worried that even more women will have the temerity to ask for treatment. 

"It’s the closest I'll ever get to being on Big Brother”: Big Boys creator Jack Rooke on freshers, grief and growing up

Jack Rooke (centre) with Dylan Llewellyn as Jack and Camille Coduri (credit: Channel 4)

It’s 2013, and the characters in Jack Rooke’s new sitcom Big Boys are navigating the first night of freshers at a typically terrible student bar. Apologies to any millennials horrified to hear their recent university experience described as a period piece, but Rooke’s sharp observations of early 2010s British culture are viscerally transportive to those halcyon days of Tumblr, Cherry Sourz and Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’.

Channel 4 announces new scripted comedy Big Boys

(credit: Channel 4)

Created and narrated by Jack Rooke, the series will follow Jack (Llewellyn), a shy but sweet closeted boy in his first year of university. Jack forms an unlikely friendship with the laddish and boisterous Danny, played by Jon Pointing (Plebs).

Having spent the past year at home, grieving the loss of his father with his mum, Jack is thrown headfirst into university life, starting with the ecstasy and agony of Freshers' week. While he seems the polar opposite of his friend Danny, the pair form a close bond over the chaos of first year.