Angry Boys

As a longtime fan of Chris Lilley's work (I loved We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High for their satirical social commentary on Australian society) I was eagerly anticipating his 3rd series, Angry Boys. After 4 long years of patiently waiting, what I got instead was nothing but a crude and lowbrow toilet humour filled series completely devoid of what made Chris Lilley so funny in the first place.

None of the characters have any likable, redeeming qualities, except for maybe Gran. The Dunt twins Daniel and Nathan Sims from We Can Be Heroes are no longer the funny teenagers we originally loved. Instead, they're just foul-mouthed, vile and gross. Normally I don't mind this style of humour if it has a point behind it but here it's just pointless and doesn't add up to anything. Their grandmother, Ruth "Gran" Sims is just as foul-mouthed as her grandsons but she is slightly more likable than the rest of the characters due to her job of being a prison officer at a juvenile hall, where she acts as a mother figure to the young inmates. Blake Oakfield, a surfer and a member of a Bra Boys-esque gang, is just plain boring. Every time one of his segments finished, I failed to even remember any remotely humorous or memorable moment from them.

But perhaps the worst characters of all were S.Mouse and Jen Okazaki. S.Mouse is supposed to be a pop rapper from Los Angeles, California but Chris Lilley clearly lacks the knowledge of any Rap/Hip-Hop culture and has just seemingly based S.Mouse on some Soulja Boy style music videos he's seen on Channel V years ago. All of S.Mouse's jokes fall flat and make you cringe (not in the humorous way intended though). Jen Okazaki, a Japanese mother of her skateboarding son, has all of her segments based around a single one-joke premise; Her son is a gay skateboarder (even though in reality he is straight) and she is reaping the benefits of it whether he likes it or not. While at first this is mildly amusing, this premise is drawn out over 12 episodes and it gets so annoying and unfunny that by the end of it you just don't care for it anymore.

In conclusion, Angry Boys is a big disappointment from the once hilarious Chris Lilley. It had so much potential to be just as hilarious as his previous two series but it is neither memorable nor interesting. If you want to see Chris Lilley at his best, pop in the DVD of We Can Be Heroes or Summer Heights High. But if you want to see him at his worst, just watch Angry Boys to see what I mean.

When I first hear about this show from a friend, I didn't really care much for it, I thought just another comedy show, but I was very wrong, when I watched the first episode on BBC iPlayer I was absolutely blown away,it was a very funny show, but yet very realistic, the comedy is not over the top, the characters are fantastic and very well played, and the last few episodes show that the show can be very emotional, I had never heard of Chris Liley before this show, and as I looked him up on IMDb he seems to be quite famous in Australia, I will have to look up some more of his work overall 10 out 10, a very good show and I hope there are more series to come!

Pure dark humor. For those who are easily offended, please excuse yourself from viewing. Crude, rude, absolutely hilarious!

Best ever. Bottom line. Everyone missed the point..

Angry Boys is a hugely ambitious new series from Chris Lilley – and one that I feel has been misunderstood by some viewers. While not as consistently funny as his previous shows, I found this to be the most engaging – with well drawn characters who you grow to care about more and more as the series progresses. Even though there were only a handful of hilarious moments per episode, I still felt that the series was solidly entertaining – incorporating moments of obscurity, profanity, profundity and tragedy – but while also managing to be funny and uplifting.

Some have criticised the amount of characters that Lilley brings to the screen in this series, but I never considered this aspect of the show to be excessive. Across 12 episodes, 6 characters felt like the right amount – and not every character is featured in every episode. Furthermore, the plots were often interwoven – both physically and thematically. Others have criticised the appearance of the characters – suggesting that they are not believable, or that they look too much like Lilley. However, this was never an issue for me. Using Gran as an example, the mannerisms, the attitude and the voice were more than enough for me to feel that she was her own character. I actually consider the understated physical differentiation between each character to be a huge triumph – demonstrating Lilley's great skill as an actor, while immersing the viewer into a strange Being John Malkovich esque parallel universe where all of the main characters look exactly the same.

Overall, I feel that Angry Boys is an accomplished series, but perhaps not one that will benefit from repeated viewings to quite the same extent as his previous shows. Nonetheless, I feel that it is further proof of Chris Lilley's diverse range of talents – and I for one cannot wait to see what he does next.

(Can't finish the review without giving a special mention to Jen Okazaki - Chris' most appalling and hilarious creation to date!)