The Young Offenders
BBC1, Mondays, 10.45pm
The Young Offenders is absolutely ridiculous. It’s about a couple of spectacularly stupid teenage doofuses getting into the most preposterous scrapes. The new series, which has just started on BBC1 (or you can binge the whole thing on iplayer), begins with the lads, Conor and Jock, trying to steal police bikes from outside a police station and then riding them through a busy shopping centre, while wearing plastic masks. Jock, meanwhile, is supposed to be at the hospital with the mother of his unborn child for her first scan. None of this would ever happen in real life, and yet this show makes it seem feasible. That’s due to the incredible charm of actors Alex Murphy and Chris Walley, who play Conor and Jock respectively, and also to the show’s creator Peter Foote, who imbues everything with a soulful good-heartedness in between all the hectic slapstick and giddy silliness. The series is often compared to Derry Girls, perhaps because it’s also set on the island of Ireland and involves young people being funny. But whereas Derry Girls has moments of emotionally resonant drama after all the brilliant funny stuff, The Young Offenders goes from stupid to sweet practically every single scene. Take Jock’s attitude to fatherhood in this series opener, which seems entirely slack to begin with, as he can’t even look after an egg nicknamed “Jock Junior” properly. Then, suddenly, one tiny, sensitive look on his face entirely wins over his put-upon girlfriend Siobhan, before he yells, “Let’s scan the shit out of this foetus!” It’s glorious stuff from start to finish. So, I implore you to watch the shit out of this series.