Why we should leave ‘The Inbetweeners’ in a more innocent era
Netflix is reportedly bringing back the awkward foursome for a reunion movie – but do we really want to see Simon getting sucked into the manosphere?
by Nick Levine · NMEIn 2026, no pop culture IP ever really dies – and nothing is as beloved as a classic sitcom. For this reason, it’s entirely unsurprising that Netflix is reportedly bringing back The Inbetweeners for a reunion movie. And yet, according to the latest tabloid dispatch, a potential stumbling block is a rumoured feud between Emily Atack, who played Charlotte Hinchcliffe, and James Buckley, who portrayed potty mouth-in-chief Jay Cartwright.
Whatever the truth behind this report, it should act as a warning sign. No one wants to imagine that the cast of their favourite show didn’t really get on, just as no one wants to picture them reuniting with gritted teeth for a career boost and a paycheque. The Inbetweeners, which originally aired on E4 between 2008 and 2010, wasn’t exactly a cosy show – actually, it was a show that briefly popularised the word “clunge” and coined the strangely satisfying expression “bus wanker”.
But we did always believe that mildly deluded Jay, sensible Will McKenzie (Simon Bird), uptight Simon Cooper (Joe Thomas) and gullible Neil Sutherland (Blake Harrison) were a rock-solid friendship group. And that the untenable girls they tried to flirt with, like Atack’s Charlotte and Emily Head’s Carli D’Amato, saw them as childish and mildly irritating rather than a genuine menace. These characters could be coarse, crass and embarrassing. But deep down, they were pretty nice guys.
At the time, The Inbetweeners was such a huge hit that it spawned two successful spin-off films: the first set on a lads’ trip to Malia, and the second on a rather more unlikely jaunt to Australia. It also yielded an inevitable US remake that, just as inevitably, didn’t last very long. A large part of The Inbetweeners‘ charm was the very British strain of adolescent awkwardness that it mined for laughs. In the UK, Jay and the crew are lovable (sometime) losers. Transpose them to the US and they become hopeless social pariahs.
Still, as durable as The Inbetweeners has proven, its appeal isn’t a bottomless well. When the cast reunited for a non-scripted 10th anniversary reunion special in 2019, the response was so overwhelmingly negative that Buckley felt compelled to apologise for it on social media. And dragging Jay, Neil, Simon and Will into 2026 for a full-length scripted film looks like an even more thankless task.
When Buckley spoke to NME in 2024, he summed up the show’s enduring popularity pretty succinctly. “I think it’s just because it’s quite funny – that’s it really. It’s not particularly big or clever; some of it’s really silly,” he said. “The whole ethos was we just wanted to make people laugh. We had this rule where we tried our hardest to make sure that something funny happened every 30 seconds.”
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“Silly” as a prevailing vibe makes sense when you’re dealing with teenage boys who are still figuring out who they are. It’s less appealing when you’re devising punchlines and pitfalls for grown men in their late 30s, as the Inbetweeners would be now. Frankly, the potential for this reunion movie to be cringe in the wrong way is huge. If the awkward foursome haven’t matured since we last saw them in 2014’s The Inbetweeners 2, it would be pretty sad. But if they have managed to shed all their adolescent chaos and confusion, they just won’t be the characters we know and love.
Put it this way – can you even picture Jay at 40? Do you want to see Will losing his well-paid office job to AI, or Simon getting sucked into the Manosphere, or Neil accidentally launching an OnlyFans, or Jay trying to go viral on TikTok? Actually, maybe that last one could be quite funny. But ultimately, it’s hard to shake the feeling that some things are best left in a more innocent era. Like the word “clunge” – and four well-meaning teenage boys who were just trying to fit in.