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Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jack Rooke on the devastating Big Boys finale: ‘People told me to bare my soul. And now I regret it'
Jack Rooke has just cycled furiously, in a trenchcoat, to avoid being late for an interview – this interview – to discuss the acclaimed final season of his Channel 4 sitcom, Big Boys. Who would have begrudged him being a little late? After all, this is one of the busiest and happiest weeks of his life. Isn't it? 'The answer is no,' he tells me, cradling an Americano while his PR handler scrolls idly on his phone, just out of earshot. 'I've often felt, this week, a little bit like slamming my head against a wall. A lot of this week has been like: 'I couldn't have worked harder for a show that I'm not sure anybody knows has even come out.'' This disarming candour will be less surprising to those familiar with Big Boys (spoiler alert: this article contains details of the final episode of Big Boys season three). After all, the show has always peered, with infectious affection, into the unexpected recesses of life. Set at the fictional Brent University, it followed a haphazard group of friends through the tribulations of student life. At the heart is Dylan Llewellyn's Jack, a surrogate for Rooke, coming to terms with his sexuality, and his roommate Danny (Jon Pointing), a seemingly confident 'lad' who is struggling with repressed mental health issues. It was an odd-couple dynamic for the 21st century. What began life as a pilot for the BBC – and was developed by E4 as a 'really bad Inbetweeners copycat with poonani jokes' – ended up as one of the most celebrated and affecting shows on TV. But for Rooke, who has graduated from precocious newcomer to coveted showrunner, the fawning 5-star reviews (including in these august pages) mean far less than the sense that people, out there in the real world, are actually watching. 'It only takes like three people, unconnected to the show, to say they didn't know it was out before you're like, 'what was the f***ing point of working my arse off for two years?'' He looks apologetic after this last judgement. 'I'm probably being a bit miserable about it,' he confesses, 'because that's my current feeling at 8am in the morning.' (It's almost 10am, but one must make allowances for the writerly temperament). Big Boys' final season – its third – has rounded out a story that began a decade ago. Despite living between Watford and Rickmansworth (a deeply unsexy corridor of this island nation), Rooke blagged his way into student accommodation at the University of Westminster's Harrow campus (the proto-Brent Uni). It was a move that – in ways both linear and not – would eventually lead to Big Boys. After completing a journalism degree, he spent time as a teaching assistant and worked as a runner for live events, before winding up at Radio 1, manning the phones for their call-in service, The Surgery. At the BBC, he began to flirt with documentary filmmaking. But the real source of professional inspiration was found away from New Broadcasting House. 'I'd started doing quite naff comedy poems above pubs,' he recalls. 'I think almost as an exercise in trying to gain confidence.' This hustle is immortalised in the final season of Big Boys, where the on-screen Jack bombs with a performance poem about Madeleine McCann. 'I think that's the scene my friends have been most triggered by. None of the suicide s***. It's me trying to be a poet.' The 'suicide s***' to which Rooke alludes, is a spectre that has hung over Big Boys from the off and was at the heart of the material Rooke developed for the Edinburgh Fringe. The character of Danny is a hybrid of friends that Rooke made at university and in his early twenties, one of whom died by suicide. 'I would say the character of Danny is based on three or four of my friends,' he says. 'Three are still here and one is not. And it's a direct letter to the one who's not, in a really earnest, emotional, autobiographical way.' Indeed, the show has always been addressed by Rooke – who serves as the narrator – to you. 'You' being Danny, 'you' being lost loved ones. The final two episodes of Big Boys are the culmination, comedically and emotionally, of this story Rooke has been working on for a decade. A final sequence, in which Rooke (the man, not the character) enters the narrative, to speak to Danny on a bench overlooking the sea in Margate, is a moment that will stand alongside those rare instances when comedy transcends its genre constraints. Radar O'Reilly interrupting the 4077th M*A*S*H to announce that Henry Blake's plane has been shot down, BoJack calling to Sarah Lynn at the planetarium, Fleabag, alone, at the bus stop. Add to that, now, a rumination on meal deal inflation. 'Jack always had that scene in his head from day one,' Big Boys's director Jim Archer tells me via email. 'What was tricky to get right was the balance of truth and story,' he says. 'That's the genius of Jack's writing in that scene. To balance truth and story and create a finale that satisfies both endings is an amazing tightrope to walk.' For the scene – one of the televisual moments of the year already – Rooke and Archer changed the aspect ratio to create a visual separation from the show's widescreen, sitcom aesthetic and allowed the conversation to run for over seven minutes. The camera lingers plaintively on the Kentish coast, and Antony Gormley's half-submerged statue, 'Another Time', stares back at Jack and Danny from the sunlit waves. 'The day we shot it was lovely. Beautiful weather. I know it's a sad scene, but we had a lovely day!' 'I felt quite protective of Jack in those moments doing those scenes,' Pointing tells me. 'I tried, always, to be really calm and be just sort of there and make him feel comfortable.' Theirs is a friendship that goes back to their days as writers and performers at the Fringe, long before Big Boys was a reality. It was there, back in the early 2010s, that Rooke knew he'd found his Danny. 'We were in a kebab shop at 3am,' Rooke recalls. 'And I just whispered in his ear – in this Danny Dyer comedy voice – 'I dare you to get a pizza.' And we laughed so much. In that moment, I was like: 'You're Danny.'' 'Obviously it really made me laugh because it was silly,' Pointing recalls. 'But in my head, I was transported back to being 17. We've gone out, we've got drunk, we've ended up at a kebab shop, and someone's trying to inject some fun into the evening.' This reverence for life's beautiful banalities runs through Rooke's work. He might lament the fact that 'there's a ceiling to any project that talks about Gamu from X Factor' but there are few shows that better understand quotidian profundities, like the rise of sweet chilli or the angelic aura of Alison Hammond. In the show's final episode, Pointing's Danny and Jules – an over-eager student counsellor played by comedy stalwart Katy Wix – find themselves on a 'cheeky 37-minute detour' to Fleet Services. It is the backdrop, of course, for another emotional rug pull. You work your arse off to almost try and impress yourself. I've done that and I'm really proud of it. But I'm really excited to write something that's not autobiographical in any way 'There's this sense of responsibility,' Wix tells me. 'It's got to be right, this big ending, it's got to be the right tone.' Wix has been part of the ensemble since its early days as a half-baked pilot, and has herself written a book, Delicacy, that deals, in wryly comic fashion, with the subject of grief. 'Because it's a subject that I have a personal connection with,' she says. 'Everyone got upset at different times, for different reasons. You have to be boundaried about it but also let the subject in enough that you're moved in the moment.' Viewers will make their own minds up about the show's finale, but Rooke has known how the saga would finish since first pitching it. The material formed the foundations of his Edinburgh shows Good Grief and Happy Hour. That festival has proved fertile ground, in recent years, for television adaptations of darkly comic British tales like Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, which was first performed there in 2013, and Richard Gadd's Baby Reindeer, which was adapted last year by Netflix and became a global smash hit. 'Richard [Gadd] dramaturged my Edinburgh shows,' Rooke explained. 'He kind of explained the Fringe to me.' And Rooke was with Gadd in a pub in Kentish Town when, some years later, he heard the news that his friend (one of Danny's forebears) had died. 'It's weird. It's the 10-year anniversary of my friend's passing in like two weeks. It's the week after the show comes out, which feels quite odd but also quite a nice way of wrapping up.' Which brings us back to where we started, with the inevitable depression of being an artist putting your work out into an uncaring world. 'You work your arse off to almost try and impress yourself,' he admits. 'I've done that and I'm really proud of it. But I'm really excited to write something that's not autobiographical in any way.' That is the next challenge. He demurs when I throw ideas at him. Will he follow Gadd onto Netflix? No comment. Is he working from some existing IP? Hmm. Is he going to be the next James Bond? Slight eyebrow twitch. 'Bloody hell, mate,' Pointing exclaims, in true Danny fashion, when I ask him to assess how Rooke has developed as a writer. 'There's a part of Jack that's this supernova – very intelligent, very engaged, with this massive library to draw from. I watched him on this job, over the years, learn a different part of his craft. He's always been a good writer, now he's learnt how to make a TV show.' 'I think he'll be fine now,' is Wix's judgment. 'He's proved himself enough to have the choice to do things he wants to do.' For Archer, meanwhile, Big Boys is a hard act to follow. 'Jack is such an amazing writer that it has now really raised the standard by how I judge a script. I've become very picky!' At just 31, staring at the dregs of cold coffee, Rooke might have shaken off the 'wunderkind' tag but there is still much to look ahead to. 'In my early twenties, performance artists and comedians in their thirties and forties were telling me to bare my soul," he recounts, with the gentle cynicism of a world-weary raconteur. "And now I f***ing regret it. I did it really carelessly.' And yet 'careless' isn't really the word you'd use for Big Boys, a show crafted with such care, such intentionality. Start to finish, it has been Rooke's vision. 'I was really lucky,' he admits, finally. 'Sometimes I speak to friends of mine who slogged their twenties trying to have any kind of creative job, but I came out of uni, had maybe 18 months of working odd jobs, and then it just landed.' Big Boys landed, and now Rooke – without recourse to cheap bird puns – is about to take off. If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@ or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to to find a helpline near you.
The Independent
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Jack Rooke on the devastating Big Boys finale: ‘People told me to bare my soul. And now I regret it'
Jack Rooke has just cycled furiously, in a trenchcoat, to avoid being late for an interview – this interview – to discuss the acclaimed final season of his Channel 4 sitcom, Big Boys. Who would have begrudged him being a little late? After all, this is one of the busiest and happiest weeks of his life. Isn't it? 'The answer is no,' he tells me, cradling an Americano while his PR handler scrolls idly on his phone, just out of earshot. 'I've often felt, this week, a little bit like slamming my head against a wall. A lot of this week has been like: 'I couldn't have worked harder for a show that I'm not sure anybody knows has even come out.'' This disarming candour will be less surprising to those familiar with Big Boys (spoiler alert: this article contains details of the final episode of Big Boys season three). After all, the show has always peered, with infectious affection, into the unexpected recesses of life. Set at the fictional Brent University, it followed a haphazard group of friends through the tribulations of student life. At the heart is Dylan Llewellyn 's Jack, a surrogate for Rooke, coming to terms with his sexuality, and his roommate Danny (Jon Pointing), a seemingly confident 'lad' who is struggling with repressed mental health issues. It was an odd-couple dynamic for the 21st century. What began life as a pilot for the BBC – and was developed by E4 as a 'really bad Inbetweeners copycat with poonani jokes' – ended up as one of the most celebrated and affecting shows on TV. But for Rooke, who has graduated from precocious newcomer to coveted showrunner, the fawning 5-star reviews (including in these august pages) mean far less than the sense that people, out there in the real world, are actually watching. 'It only takes like three people, unconnected to the show, to say they didn't know it was out before you're like, 'what was the f***ing point of working my arse off for two years?'' He looks apologetic after this last judgement. 'I'm probably being a bit miserable about it,' he confesses, 'because that's my current feeling at 8am in the morning.' (It's almost 10am, but one must make allowances for the writerly temperament). Big Boys ' final season – its third – has rounded out a story that began a decade ago. Despite living between Watford and Rickmansworth (a deeply unsexy corridor of this island nation), Rooke blagged his way into student accommodation at the University of Westminster's Harrow campus (the proto-Brent Uni). It was a move that – in ways both linear and not – would eventually lead to Big Boys. After completing a journalism degree, he spent time as a teaching assistant and worked as a runner for live events, before winding up at Radio 1, manning the phones for their call-in service, The Surgery. At the BBC, he began to flirt with documentary filmmaking. But the real source of professional inspiration was found away from New Broadcasting House. 'I'd started doing quite naff comedy poems above pubs,' he recalls. 'I think almost as an exercise in trying to gain confidence.' This hustle is immortalised in the final season of Big Boys, where the on-screen Jack bombs with a performance poem about Madeleine McCann. 'I think that's the scene my friends have been most triggered by. None of the suicide s***. It's me trying to be a poet.' The 'suicide s***' to which Rooke alludes, is a spectre that has hung over Big Boys from the off and was at the heart of the material Rooke developed for the Edinburgh Fringe. The character of Danny is a hybrid of friends that Rooke made at university and in his early twenties, one of whom died by suicide. 'I would say the character of Danny is based on three or four of my friends,' he says. 'Three are still here and one is not. And it's a direct letter to the one who's not, in a really earnest, emotional, autobiographical way.' Indeed, the show has always been addressed by Rooke – who serves as the narrator – to you. 'You' being Danny, 'you' being lost loved ones. The final two episodes of Big Boys are the culmination, comedically and emotionally, of this story Rooke has been working on for a decade. A final sequence, in which Rooke (the man, not the character) enters the narrative, to speak to Danny on a bench overlooking the sea in Margate, is a moment that will stand alongside those rare instances when comedy transcends its genre constraints. Radar O'Reilly interrupting the 4077th M*A*S*H to announce that Henry Blake's plane has been shot down, BoJack calling to Sarah Lynn at the planetarium, Fleabag, alone, at the bus stop. Add to that, now, a rumination on meal deal inflation. 'Jack always had that scene in his head from day one,' Big Boys 's director Jim Archer tells me via email. 'What was tricky to get right was the balance of truth and story,' he says. 'That's the genius of Jack's writing in that scene. To balance truth and story and create a finale that satisfies both endings is an amazing tightrope to walk.' For the scene – one of the televisual moments of the year already – Rooke and Archer changed the aspect ratio to create a visual separation from the show's widescreen, sitcom aesthetic and allowed the conversation to run for over seven minutes. The camera lingers plaintively on the Kentish coast, and Antony Gormley's half-submerged statue, 'Another Time', stares back at Jack and Danny from the sunlit waves. 'The day we shot it was lovely. Beautiful weather. I know it's a sad scene, but we had a lovely day!' 'I felt quite protective of Jack in those moments doing those scenes,' Pointing tells me. 'I tried, always, to be really calm and be just sort of there and make him feel comfortable.' Theirs is a friendship that goes back to their days as writers and performers at the Fringe, long before Big Boys was a reality. It was there, back in the early 2010s, that Rooke knew he'd found his Danny. 'We were in a kebab shop at 3am,' Rooke recalls. 'And I just whispered in his ear – in this Danny Dyer comedy voice – 'I dare you to get a pizza.' And we laughed so much. In that moment, I was like: 'You're Danny.'' 'Obviously it really made me laugh because it was silly,' Pointing recalls. 'But in my head, I was transported back to being 17. We've gone out, we've got drunk, we've ended up at a kebab shop, and someone's trying to inject some fun into the evening.' This reverence for life's beautiful banalities runs through Rooke's work. He might lament the fact that 'there's a ceiling to any project that talks about Gamu from X Factor ' but there are few shows that better understand quotidian profundities, like the rise of sweet chilli or the angelic aura of Alison Hammond. In the show's final episode, Pointing's Danny and Jules – an over-eager student counsellor played by comedy stalwart Katy Wix – find themselves on a 'cheeky 37-minute detour' to Fleet Services. It is the backdrop, of course, for another emotional rug pull. 'There's this sense of responsibility,' Wix tells me. 'It's got to be right, this big ending, it's got to be the right tone.' Wix has been part of the ensemble since its early days as a half-baked pilot, and has herself written a book, Delicacy, that deals, in wryly comic fashion, with the subject of grief. 'Because it's a subject that I have a personal connection with,' she says. 'Everyone got upset at different times, for different reasons. You have to be boundaried about it but also let the subject in enough that you're moved in the moment.' Viewers will make their own minds up about the show's finale, but Rooke has known how the saga would finish since first pitching it. The material formed the foundations of his Edinburgh shows Good Grief and Happy Hour. That festival has proved fertile ground, in recent years, for television adaptations of darkly comic British tales like Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, which was first performed there in 2013, and Richard Gadd's Baby Reindeer, which was adapted last year by Netflix and became a global smash hit. 'Richard [Gadd] dramaturged my Edinburgh shows,' Rooke explained. 'He kind of explained the Fringe to me.' And Rooke was with Gadd in a pub in Kentish Town when, some years later, he heard the news that his friend (one of Danny's forebears) had died. 'It's weird. It's the 10-year anniversary of my friend's passing in like two weeks. It's the week after the show comes out, which feels quite odd but also quite a nice way of wrapping up.' Which brings us back to where we started, with the inevitable depression of being an artist putting your work out into an uncaring world. 'You work your arse off to almost try and impress yourself,' he admits. 'I've done that and I'm really proud of it. But I'm really excited to write something that's not autobiographical in any way.' That is the next challenge. He demurs when I throw ideas at him. Will he follow Gadd onto Netflix? No comment. Is he working from some existing IP? Hmm. Is he going to be the next James Bond? Slight eyebrow twitch. 'Bloody hell, mate,' Pointing exclaims, in true Danny fashion, when I ask him to assess how Rooke has developed as a writer. 'There's a part of Jack that's this supernova – very intelligent, very engaged, with this massive library to draw from. I watched him on this job, over the years, learn a different part of his craft. He's always been a good writer, now he's learnt how to make a TV show.' 'I think he'll be fine now,' is Wix's judgment. 'He's proved himself enough to have the choice to do things he wants to do.' For Archer, meanwhile, Big Boys is a hard act to follow. 'Jack is such an amazing writer that it has now really raised the standard by how I judge a script. I've become very picky!' At just 31, staring at the dregs of cold coffee, Rooke might have shaken off the 'wunderkind' tag but there is still much to look ahead to. 'In my early twenties, performance artists and comedians in their thirties and forties were telling me to bare my soul," he recounts, with the gentle cynicism of a world-weary raconteur. "And now I f***ing regret it. I did it really carelessly.' And yet 'careless' isn't really the word you'd use for Big Boys, a show crafted with such care, such intentionality. Start to finish, it has been Rooke's vision. 'I was really lucky,' he admits, finally. 'Sometimes I speak to friends of mine who slogged their twenties trying to have any kind of creative job, but I came out of uni, had maybe 18 months of working odd jobs, and then it just landed.' Big Boys landed, and now Rooke – without recourse to cheap bird puns – is about to take off. If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@ or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Guardian
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I spent a lot of time crying on the tube': Big Boys creator Jack Rooke on saying goodbye to his comedy hit
Jack Rooke's got a problem with something written about him on the internet. Folded into a slightly-too-small chair in the regal-looking cafe of north London's St Pancras Renaissance hotel, he shakes his head in dismay, causing his mass of tight curls to jiggle. 'Rooke. Is. Gay,' he slowly repeats when reminded of the three words that make up the entirety of his Wikipedia page's 'personal life' section. 'There's a guy I'm currently dating who has mentioned it no less than four times. I'm like, 'Can somebody just delete that?'' But while Wikipedia's summation of Rooke's personal life may be reductive, its section headed 'works' is expansive. It culminates in Big Boys, the 31-year-old comedian and writer's Bafta-nominated, semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy, which has just returned to Channel 4 for its third and final season. Based on Rooke's 2015 Edinburgh fringe show, Good Grief, about the death of his father from cancer, and his 2020 memoir-slash-advice guide, Cheer the F**k Up, it follows grieving, gay student Jack (Dylan Llewellyn) as he navigates life at Brent University and tries to lose his anal virginity. By his side is straight best friend Danny (Jon Pointing), his geezer-y bluster and banter masking a struggle with depression. Both are buffeted by a support cast of strong, straight-talking female characters including Jack's hilarious cousin Shannon (Harriet Webb). At its best, Big Boys mixes the soulful pathos of The Royle Family with the top-tier cringe comedy of Fleabag. It's about life and death, but with jokes involving eye-opening gloryhole injuries, the perils of downing poppers and niche 2010s pop culture – Jack's pet fish is called Alison Hammond – littered throughout. Rooke himself acts as narrator, often speaking directly to Danny – a character 'based on four of my friends', he says, 'three of them are still here and one of them isn't'. The fact that Danny is addressed in the past tense adds an undercurrent of melancholy. Rooke, today sporting a shirt stolen from the Big Boys costume department, had trouble letting go of his creation. 'I spent a lot of time crying in the car on the way [to set],' he says. 'And then, because the budgets got so bad, later I was also crying on the tube on the way to set because I thought 'every little helps',' he laughs, pulling off a very Rooke/Big Boys trait of mixing humour with something more serious: a cashflow catastrophe hitting homegrown TV production and UK culture more broadly. 'But while I was there, I had the happiest, best time.' Some of the best days were spent filming with the likes of Rylan Clark and the actual Alison Hammond, who both have cameos. Rooke says he was certain neither would agree to appear, which seems strange given the show's glowing reviews, litany of awards (in 2023, Rooke won a Writers' Guild of Great Britain award) and celebrity fans such as Kylie Minogue, who was recommended the show by a friend of a friend ('I think if you're a gay man and Kylie Minogue doesn't have your number, then you're not gay,' Rooke quips). So why the lack of confidence? 'I still don't see it as a hit show,' he says, sipping a mint tea. 'I see what huge hit shows get in terms of budget and marketing.' He references cash-rich Netflix productions promoted by flashy immersive experiences housed in warehouses. 'I'm like, 'Can't we do that with Big Boys? Go to a warehouse and there's gloryholes everywhere, but you have to put a love letter through the hole instead of a cock.'' Even the big set piece that opens series three – the gang jet off to Greece after Shannon wins big-ish at bingo – was done on a budget. 'It wasn't actually Greece,' Rooke laughs. 'It was Malta, because of the tax cuts. Also, there's a whole Greek gay bar section that we shot in a hotel in Edgware called the Madonna hotel. It's the campest place ever.' Rooke has always been able to improvise if necessary. As a kid, growing up in Watford, he was obsessed with magic and would sleep with a homemade magic wand (actually a stick covered in masking tape). He struggles to pinpoint exactly what it was about magic that he loved, but is wary of linking it to his sexuality, or upbringing, as part of some Sad Gay Past he had to escape from. 'I am the product of two working-class parents that had a kid in their mid-40s and by that point had a bit of money,' he says. 'I was born into a council flat but then we moved to a house so I feel like I had a foot in the working-class experience of growing up and not having much, and then a foot in the middle-class experience. I also don't really know how much of my youth I spent worrying about being gay.' Even series one's crowning moment – when Jack tells his mum he's gay – was never supposed to be a big event. 'I used to get very annoyed on set when people called it the coming out scene,' he says. 'For me, it's about the fact his dad's dead and he can't tell him something about himself that's new. That was the emotional drive. It wasn't about the shame of sexuality.' The scene was later shown on Celebrity Gogglebox and hit a nerve, going viral on TikTok. 'I was trying not to do the grand cliche of gay writers who write the coming out scene, but of course it was a fucking coming out scene. I needed to just accept that.' Rooke says there was always 'the presumption that I was [gay] from very masculine, geezer-y figures in my family'. But his dad, 'a bit of a Danny', would take him to places that 'had some gay presence', like Camden market, and would also support his childhood obsession with the Spice Girls, replacing a Baby Spice doll after Rooke chewed its head off. Even before his dad died when Rooke was 15, he was supported by a strong feminine energy. 'I was around a lot of women taking very little shit from anyone for anything,' he smiles. He mentions his auntie Jill, a 74-year-old painter and decorator, and his auntie Marion, who drove buses. 'They all grafted a lot, because they had to. The men I spent a lot of time with in my earlier years were either in crisis or violent. And I don't mean constantly abusive, constantly bad people, but they dealt with their aggression through punching walls or kicking something.' In his late teens, Rooke did work experience at Calm, a charity aimed at offering support for those in crisis. 'Everyone who called in the first week I was there was a wife, sister, mother or girlfriend, worried sick about a man in their life,' he says. The experience inspired Big Boys storylines involving Danny's girlfriend Corinne (Izuka Hoyle) and his hapless university mentor Jules (Katy Wix), who attempt to put Danny back together. 'The reason the male mental health conversation has occurred is because women have encouraged men to open up,' Rooke says. 'I want this series to celebrate those women.' I ask Rooke why he suggested we meet in the Renaissance hotel. I assume, perhaps, it was a Spice Girls reference (their debut video for Wannabe was filmed here). It turns out it's to do with where he's heading next, post-Big Boys, with the hotel featuring in not one but two future projects. 'One is a film I want to write and direct, and the other is a comedy drama.' He's tight-lipped about the latter but, like Big Boys, the film is a personal story tinged by loss. In 2020, Rooke's older brother Dean lost his partner to cancer. The day they found out it was terminal Dean proposed underneath Tracey Emin's 'I want my time with you' neon sign that hangs at the back of the hotel. 'Dean is a real geez, like a lad's lad, and I remember thinking it was the most touching, thoughtful, emotionally resilient, brave thing I've ever seen anyone do ever.' Writing, however, isn't necessarily where Rooke's future lies. He much prefers being on a set, running things, feeding into every detail. He's disarmingly honest about his book, calling it 'awful. Dreadful.' He was inspired to write it after reading too many books about mental health written by 'a thirtysomething middle-class person who would then say, 'I did have a private therapist subsidised by both my parents as well as the income that I'd made in my 20s being a FTSE 100 company leader''. He lets out a loud cackle. 'I got so fucking fed up of reading those shitty books that I was like, there has to be one that's written by someone like me on the NHS waiting list who thinks they might be gay and whose friend's killed themselves. But I don't think I'm a very talented longform writer. Did I do the book for the money? Yes. Did I also hope it would be useful and that it would have advice for young people? Yes.' An increasingly powerful figure in TV – he recently signed with the prestigious American agency UTA, whose other clients include Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Greta Gerwig – Rooke is keen for his work to continue to help people. It's this altruistic trait he admires in others, too. He tells me his current celebrity crush is financial journalist and unlikely hunk Martin Lewis. 'I don't know why,' he laughs. 'There's something about him wanting to help people not get scammed that really makes me go fucking feral.' Another line for the Wikipedia page, perhaps. Big Boys series three is available to stream on the Channel 4 website
Sky News
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Sky News
Big Boys cast bid farewell with season three of Bafta-winning show
Jack Rooke says he does not want to revisit the Big Boys story again once season three is out. The Bafta award-winning writer based the Channel 4 series on his university experience in the 2010s while he explored his sexuality for the first time and learned to live with the grief from his father's death. Speaking to Sky News, he says although the drama comedy received a great reaction from fans and critics, he does not imagine ever returning to it for a reboot or spin-off. "I know everyone always wants to leave the door open. I think there's something so brilliant, a special moment here to just celebrate something being exactly what it is," he says. "It's a succinct story that has a beginning and an end in the final episode of Big Boys, the last two episodes I wrote kind of almost run one into another. It's like a two-part ending." He adds: "I just think there's something about leaving them. Every single character by the end of their series, their story is tied up, and I'm proud of that as a writer because it's quite difficult to try and give everyone an ending. But I think we've done that." That decision does not mean he wants to leave his cast behind, in fact, he says he already has a goal in mind. "I'm really up for writing something completely different that has exactly the same cast. I would like to write like a completely different story. Completely fictional, completely oddball, completely weird, but have the whole gang in there again playing completely different parts," he says. "One day I'd like to write Dylan [Llewellyn] as a real nasty villain. No more sweethearts from the 'wee English fella' [from Derry Girls]. I want him to play like someone quite bloodthirsty." Season one and two of Big Boys followed Jack, played by Derry Girls star Llewellyn, a shy 19-year-old student moving a short distance away from his mother for the first time to start his new life at Brent University. Sharing accommodation with Danny, Sweetpea actor Jon Pointing, the pair quickly form a close bond and begin to navigate through their lives together. Llewellyn says he will look back proudly at what the cast and crew achieved with the series, showing young people finding their footing and pride in themselves. "I think that the dynamic between Jack and Danny is something you don't see very often - a gay guy and a straight guy having that friendship, having that bond," he says. "You don't see it enough on TV, I don't think. And yet you have it every day, you have it like in real life so why isn't it on TV, you know?" For those who may not have watched a full episode yet, they have more than likely stumbled upon one of its most poignant scenes. The moment the character Jack made the decision to tell his mother he's gay featured on Celebrity Gogglebox and quickly went viral on social media. Rooke says the appearance on Gogglebox was huge for the show, but it was also special to have a moment about his mother and late father resonate with people. "People call it a coming out scene but to me, every line in that scene was about grief. It was about loss. It was about when you can't tell someone who is no longer with you something so huge about yourself, but you can still tell the people who are there and who are going to love and support you, whatever," he says. "So, I think that scene to me is always going to be really close to my heart. And the three of them performed their socks off in that moment." The 31-year-old says he is slightly apprehensive about how he has decided to finish the acclaimed show. "There is a scene in episode six of series three, and even just the last two minutes of that episode, the last two minutes of Big Boys, to me, I feel like that is the show. It's about 'chosen family' and people who pick you up when you are at your lowest and I think that's the sort of legacy of the show," he says. "It's always about the people we choose, and I know that the concept of chosen family isn't a new thing, but I don't think you can ever be reminded enough how important that is, especially right now in the current climate we're in. It is about saying 'we' first." He adds: "It's a risk some people might not like the ending of this show [sic]. I think we've taken a bit of a riskier end to this but that feels truer and more authentic and will hopefully resonate with people." Big Boys season three airs on Channel 4 at 10pm on Sunday 9 February.
The Guardian
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Big Boys: it's the final season of TV's funniest sitcom – and it's as sharp, wise and filthy as ever
In the street yesterday, a man asked me if I'd heard the Good News. Happily, I had: Big Boys is back on Channel 4 this Sunday! Now, it turns out we were talking about different things. It wasn't much of a discussion anyway, as he was yelling into a megaphone, which is poor mic technique. It's his loss, because Big Boys is the funniest, sharpest and wisest sitcom around. Spread the word. Loss is baked into the series, which is drawn from creator Jack Rooke's real-life experiences of coming out at university after his father's death. He is befriended by hunky straight lad Danny, who yearns for closeness with his alcoholic dad, while feeling overwhelming guilt for abandoning his nan in a care home. There's swotty Scots firebrand Corinne and sophisticated fashion student Yemi, who becomes Jack's gay mentor. Due to an administrative error, they all live in a shed. Classic stuff. It really is – that shed idea could have come from Last of the Summer Wine. There's a bit of Derry Girls in the DNA, not just for the angelic, diffident presence of Dylan Llewellyn as Jack. Gavin & Stacey too, another touchstone of working-class warmth. Big Boys is a queer coming-of-age story but totally universal. Its theme is friendship, and it is British to its underpants. Big Brother, Alison Hammond and the Tesco Meal Deal are sacred texts, much pored over. And it's filthy. Remember when Jack drank poppers? Or Danny shat himself in bed with a girl? If not, go back to series one and get to know your culture. In the gang's third year at Brent University, Jack's misadventures include meeting his school bully through Grindr and using a curly font in the section of his dissertation that deals with Aids, in order to 'cheer the markers up'. There's an Adrian Mole-esque sweetness to Jack's anal-virginity mission. Yet he has less to do for much of this series, as Big Boys widens its empathetic lens to embrace its supporting characters. This impeccable roster includes Annette Badland as matriarchal savage Nanny Bingo, a regally charismatic Olisa Odele as Yemi, and my favourite, Katy Wix, unrecognisable from Stath Lets Flats. The awkward zealotry she brings to the role of union officer Jules is spellbindingly odd. Jon Pointing, though. There should be terrace chants to Jon Pointing. Alongside Paul Mescal and Leo Woodall, we are living through a golden generation of Sensitive Lads. Pointing plays Danny, half of the touching straight-gay friendship at the heart of the show. His tart-with-a-heart, cheeky Nando's, geezer ally with secret mental health struggles has always been the rug-pulling, painful heart of the series. Trust me when I tell you that his performance will shred you. Just put your heart into a Magimix, turn it on and leave the room. Consider yourselves warned. The boys in Big Boys are various sizes, all handsome and very funny. The show has zingers to spare. The sound design is funny. Even the subtitles are funny. But this is also the most emotionally literate show on TV. Not in the debased sense that characters throw therapy-speak at each other or self-diagnose attachment styles. Rooke's script has a dramatic commitment to emotional beats, and pulls them off with the economic specificity of comedy. It's beautifully judged; the show has always been about life and death, but nothing feels mawkish or manipulative in it, only human and tender. Sorry for saying 'pulls them off'. We haven't talked about the soundtrack: glorious 2010s needle drops from Patrick Wolf, Self Esteem and Hot Chip. It is a huge injustice that Danny's improvised song Batty on My Lappy (about charging his computer) has been left off the Spotify playlist, as I have used it as a personal pick-me-up for years. Apart from that, it's a perfect 10. This is the show's final series. The end is nigh, so let me get my sandwich board out: this beauty of a sitcom is something to shout about. The adventures of Jack and his inner circle (sorry, sorry) feel like the warmth of spring, ready to come in. Open your hearts, and let them in. Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion Big Boys on Sunday 9 February, 10pm, Channel 4.
