Damon Beesley understands how boys encourage one another to behave badly, then punish whoever embarrasses himself first. With Iain Morris, he makes The Inbetweeners sharply funny about teenage friendship, though the girls deserve more attention than they get.
Fi1m perspective
In The Inbetweeners (2008), trying to attract a girl becomes more difficult when there are friends to impress as well. Beesley and co-writer Iain Morris make those watching boys part of the trouble: nobody can risk looking unsure in front of them. An ordinary conversation provides enough opportunity for disaster. We laughed, then felt slightly ashamed of how much we enjoyed the boys’ pleasure in one another’s embarrassment. The writing lets us enjoy their cruelty while showing why none of them should take advice from the others.
Before the suburban sixth form came writing work on the musical comedy Flight of the Conchords (2007). We recommend that series for its deadpan performers and the songs that make them funnier, with a caveat about the waiting between numbers. Beesley was a contributing writer there; The Inbetweeners, co-created with Morris, is the firmer guide to his work. Its sixth-form setting gives the pair a useful limit, with bunking off and attempts to attract girls providing enough trouble without an extraordinary crisis.
Beesley draws on his own teenage experiences in suburban Kent, but recognition alone would not make these exchanges funny. He and Morris understand how a group rewards boasting, even when it is plainly making everybody’s situation worse. The four leads’ comic timing does much of the work, and the gross-out jokes usually belong to the boys’ determination to make somebody else uncomfortable first. The limitation is how little attention the writing gives the girls; understanding that these boys are self-absorbed does not make that narrowness less noticeable.
The move to cinema brought The Inbetweeners Movie (2011), which he wrote, and The Inbetweeners 2 (2014), which he wrote and directed. White Gold (2017), his first solo-created series, took him to double-glazing sales in the 1980s. That programme drew criticism for familiar character types, while some critics found the later The First Team (2020) less consistently funny than The Inbetweeners. For a first encounter, we would choose The Inbetweeners, with fair warning about the filth.
Biography
Damon Beesley (born 28 November 1971) is an English writer, director and television producer. He is best known for co-creating the E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners (2008–2010) with writing partner Iain Morris, on which he also served as writer and director. He wrote episodes of the HBO series Flight of the Conchords (2007–2009).
Beesley and Morris met while working as producers on Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show. They later founded Bwark Productions. Beesley directed, wrote and created the BBC Two series White Gold (2017–2019). His other credits include directing and writing The Inbetweeners 2 (2014) and creating The First Team (2020). The Inbetweeners won the British Comedy Award for Best New TV Comedy in 2008, and Beesley received Writers Guild of America Award nominations for his work on Flight of the Conchords.
