by Rhys John Edwards 

G’wed has been a tremendous success for ITVX. Sold as Gen Z’s answer to The Inbetweeners, it spawned healthy reviews, a pleading feature in The Guardian declaring it to be ‘criminally overlooked’, and even a coveted Instagram shout-out from TV supremo Russell T Davies. 

It also emerged as one of just two survivors from ITV’s ‘comedy is back in the building’ campaign, having received a second - and third! - series order alongside Alan Carr’s Changing Ends. All sounds very promising, doesn't it? 

Having recently binged its first series ahead of the second dropping today, I think it’s fair to say it’s more of a mixed bag than much of its acclaim is willing to let on. 

It’s true that The Inbetweeners is its closest comedic sibling, with the show similarly following a group of chaotic teenagers who navigate adolescence with plenty of crude but authentic ‘laddy bants’. It even has the temerity to steal the fish-out-of-water premise of ‘posh boy goes to state school’. But where Simon Bird’s ‘Will’ ended up at a Comprehensive because of his parents’ divorce, G’wed’s equivalent Christopher (Jake Kenny-Byrne) moves away because his mother has died - and it is here that G’wed sets itself apart, making a conscious choice to avoid playing this sentiment for laughs.  

Christopher’s grief is taken seriously, even by the ruthless, ridiculing group of lads in which he is soon integrated. They are led by Dylan-Thomas Smith’s Reece, a bolshy jack-the-lad - and I swear I’ll stop The Inbetweeners comparisons in a minute, but he is essentially this show’s Jay Cartwright. He carries a similar energy, with suitable bravado and cheek, but he marries this with greater intellect and less insecurity. 

Accompanied by a haughty but hilarious duo Mia and Aimee (Gemma Barraclough and Amber Harrison), with additional characters including Ella (Evie Ward-Drummond) a well-observed pretentious activist, the show takes on a more ensemble approach by the end of its first series and starts to shed its male-centric skin. 

It also has quite a specific tone which makes it more akin to a live-action cartoon than a sitcom grounded in reality. It’s not that it’s crass or overly reliant on shock value humour, the issue lies mainly with the fact that you just don’t buy any of it for a single second. The storytelling is entirely incidental, with writer Danny Kenny aiming for laughs at the expense of making virtually anything that happens even vaguely believable.  

You have schoolgirl Mia mimicking sex (and an orgasm of When Harry Met Sally proportions) in a classroom, whilst her mute teacher looks on and takes no action at all. Then there’s Aimee, who willingly provides the school bully with a bag of her underwear because he has too much testosterone - no further justification needed apparently. And what about Ted (Dominic Murphy), who persuades the lads to perform various horror-film-style jump scares in the woods to frighten his boyfriend? Which, by the way, is intended to teach him not to use his polyamorous lifestyle as an excuse to be disrespectful. Yeah, that’ll do the trick.  

These are just a few of many scenarios that have presumably been proposed on the basis that they might generate a laugh, irrespective of whether they make any sense at all. And whilst these do admittedly create funny moments - and it’s completely acceptable for a comedy to take the form of a live-action cartoon - the lack of realism here clashes with the show's attempts at satire and social commentary.  

G’wed is clearly a show keen to subvert expectations, whether it’s lapsed Muslim Mo (Zak Douglas) pretending to be orthodox so he can seduce a girl, or Ted actively booing a fellow student who is trying to convince others to join a diversity project, even though he himself would benefit. 

There’s a sense that everyone is a target. No one is safe. The ideology of this show places itself against the anti-woke angry mob but also above social justice warriors. Its central characters are down-to-earth, often making a plea for common sense - but not the kind that lunatics call on to justify their hate, nor the kind that pseudo-sociologists with anime profile pictures spout on Twitter - instead, they strive for higher ground to look down on it all with disdain.  

Occasionally, it does this well, but the writing can often feel ‘too online’ to the point of being grating. Some dialogue is overly verbose, striving for ironic, postmodern discourse that is better expressed in 280 characters than in any real-life conversation. For instance, there’s a scene in which Reece asks a group of girls what their pronouns are - because his are ‘disgusting / little / perverted / rat’. He subsequently explains he is a proud member of the DLPR Community.  

Again, more often than not, these jokes work - you just struggle to believe they’d ever be spoken out loud, which makes G’wed the sitcom equivalent of an over-embellished anecdote in a stand-up routine. The audience knows it didn’t happen like that, but they laughed, so who cares?  

The problem is, that specific suspension of disbelief is more widely accepted by audiences in a comedy club, and I’m not sure the same rules apply to the sitcom. Watching the show can sometimes feel a bit like turning up to play a game of tennis to find that in place of an opponent is one of those aggressive ball dispensers. It mercilessly fires jokes in your face without strategy - and that could be a problem for people who actually fancied playing a proper game.  

The question of whether you should be watching G’wed or not will come down to how much belief you’re capable of suspending. Given the show’s wave of reported success, and the faith shown by ITV with its double-series commission, perhaps there are already plenty out there who are willing to do exactly that.  

But one thing is certain - the laughs are guaranteed. Those comedic Slazengers will be served thick and fast, just be warned, it's the dramatic volleys that will be veering slightly off-target. 

• G’wed Series One and Two is now available on ITVX.  Series Two starts on ITV2 at 10.05pm tonight

Published: 6 Feb 2025