Iain Morris is at his funniest when young men make an ordinary conversation needlessly humiliating. His work with Damon Beesley gets the bragging and betrayals right; the girls deserve more attention, and broader stories suit him less reliably.
Fi1m perspective
In The Inbetweeners (2008), the boys can wreck their chances with a girl simply by talking in front of one another. Iain Morris and co-creator Damon Beesley know how quickly the wish to impress becomes a public embarrassment. We laughed at their cruelty to one another, then caught ourselves enjoying it almost as much as they did. The insults work because each boy has friends ready to encourage him into something foolish. Morris is at his funniest when nobody needs to leave the sixth form for a disaster to happen.
Morris began in comedy as a producer and script editor; he also wrote for Flight of the Conchords (2007). Its songs make the deadpan performances of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement funnier, though the ordinary plots can test our patience between numbers. His partnership with Beesley is where his comic habits become easier to identify. They develop characters and stories face-to-face before scripting, a sensible method for comedy in which the response to a boast matters as much as the boast itself.
The first Inbetweeners film (2011) and The Inbetweeners 2 (2014) took those characters into features; Morris co-wrote both and co-directed the second. Those films had firmly established voices to draw on. In the original series, though, the girls receive too little attention and the bodily humour sometimes settles for bluntness. A little more curiosity about the girls would have made this a richer comedy without requiring the boys to become any wiser.
Next Goal Wins (2023), co-written with Taika Waititi, is less satisfying. The team that lost 31–0 and kept turning up has to give way to Michael Fassbender's coach, who receives too much of the film's attention. Yet Kaimana's Jaiyah is treated with care: being fa’afafine troubles the coach, not the island community. That care matters, but the kindness and occasional good joke cannot compensate for spending so little time with the team. For an evening with Morris, we would choose the boys making fools of themselves in The Inbetweeners.
Biography
Iain Morris is an English writer and director. He created the E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners (2008–2010) with his writing partner Damon Beesley, and has written and directed its two feature films, The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) and The Inbetweeners 2 (2014).
Morris wrote two episodes of the HBO series Flight of the Conchords (2007–2009). He co-wrote the screenplay for Taika Waititi's Next Goal Wins (2023) and co-created and wrote the BBC series The First Team (2020). Other credits include writing for What We Do in the Shadows (2019) and directing The Festival (2018) and the series Time Bandits (2024).
