Big Boys season 3 spoilers are minor in this review.
To bring Jack Rooke's acclaimed series to an end, the third and final season of Big Boys answers a very important question. No, not just what happened to Danny, Jack's best friend, and no, not even how Jack managed to graduate with so much going on at Brent uni.
The most important question of all is verbalised by Jack himself early on in the season-three premiere when he asks: "How do I have a contactless debit card and still haven't been bummed?"
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Picture it: it's the summer of 2015, "Pre- Brexit and COVID and air fryers". Louis Walsh is about to exit The X Factor before the UK exits the EU. And Jack, in his final year at uni, still hasn't lost his virginity.
Dissertations, deadlines and dating are all on the cards for Jack and the rest of the gang too, including Corinne, Yemi and Danny, Jack's straight best friend. But just like previous seasons, Big Boys is still more than another mere sitcom set on making you laugh.
Season three does that, of course. The name of Jack's dissertation — "To bum or not to bum" — sent me almost as much as the spoken-word poetry competition he takes part in, complete with a requisite beret. And don't get me started on the dedication at the end of the premiere, which almost made me spit out my Shloer.
Yet with every laugh also comes the threat of sadness (although "threat" isn't quite the right word). Pain and grief permeates throughout Rooke's writing as each character contends with the realities of adult life, but it's not always something we must shy away from.
Just as Rooke grapples with his own past and the losses that still hurt him to this day, each tear and sob depicted throughout the show asks us to reflect on our struggles too.
Big Boys is cathartic for both Rooke and us (and probably the cast as well) precisely because it feels so relateable and universal. That's pretty remarkable for any series, let alone one that also focuses so well on the specificities of life as a young gay British man who's (rightly) obsessed with Alison Hammond.
Perhaps more than any other season, the final run shifts its focus further away from Jack than before, pledging to give each character in the impressive ensemble an ending that befits them all.
In just five episodes, everyone is given space to develop and shine, including Izuka Hoyle (Corinne) and Olisa Odele (Yemi) to Harriet Webb (Shannon) and Camille Coduri (Peggy), not to mention Annette Badland in another award-worthy performance as Jack's Nan. I say five episodes, not six, because the finale takes a surprise detour that...
But spoiling the end of Big Boys would be more criminal than the way Danny's father treats him throughout the show. It would be even worse than having to relive the time Rita Ora replaced Louis Walsh on X Factor, as we have to here in season three.
It's not easy to avoid talking about it though, as this is the kind of episode TV was made for, the kind you want to sit around and analyse with your friends after watching.
It's also not easy to imagine how Rooke even tackled this episode after season two already ended on what was arguably the perfect note. Following that up felt nigh-on impossible, which is why it's so smart of Rooke to veer in the surprise direction he does here.
Talking to Channel 4, Rooke recently said, "I always knew what I wanted the ending to be," and it's heartening to see that he's stuck to that, taking risks at a point where it would have been easy to play it safe given the acclaim season two received.
It's in those standout moments from season two, the scenes where fiction and reality collided via Jack's fleeting but tangible appearances in the show, that the finale draws inspiration. And not just inspiration.
This time around, Rooke runs with this beautifully tender, meta approach to craft another perfect ending, one fans won't expect but will sob along with regardless.
It's rather fitting given that the final season as a whole is somewhat more melancholic this time around. As adult life encroaches more than ever, stresses upon stresses pile up and squeeze some of the humour out. But that's okay because Big Boys was never just about the laughs, and there are still laughs to be had.
The result is a closing chapter that doesn't quite hit the highs of season two, yet easily remains "one of the best and most important British shows of the last decade" (as we described it in last year's review).
Now that all of the show's big questions have finally been answered, the only ones that remain are what are we supposed to do without Jack and Danny and the rest of the gang in our lives anymore?
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
