Telly Review: The Young Offenders is still a relatable, funny hug of a TV show in its fourth season
New series of hit comedy The Young Offenders coming to BBC One on May 10th 2024
(BBC One and iPlayer) has always thrived on chaos and surprise. Season Four is no exception – Jock and Conor are in separate prisons for cocaine smuggling.
Their former principal, Barry, has been kicked out by his wife Orla. Conor’s ex, Linda has moved on and is engaged to his arch-enemy, Gavin Madigan. So it’s all change.
But it’s still the same daft madness of the first three seasons. Jock is absent for the first two episodes, in prison in Columbia.
Conor is doing time at home, caught with cocaine after landing on one of the many direct flights from Bogota to Cork. He’s released early thanks to his new stepdad, Sergeant Healy.
Shane Casey’s irrepressible Billy Murphy steps in to fill the Jock-sized hole in Conor’s life and they set about getting Linda back with ‘her ex-con’.
The tricky bit is persuading us that the lads are still young. (The movie that started it all was eight years ago.) The writers get around this by not really bothering to try.
There is a nod to the years passing when the judge sending Conor to prison tells him he isn’t a young offender any more.
But the rest of the early episodes are a finger up to the judge and anyone who thinks the boys need to grow up.
There are still plenty of knob jokes and rampant diarrhoea, and it’s still very enjoyable. (I’m not just saying this because I have a very small part in a later episode.)
The Young Offenders is mainly the same people doing the same things in the same place. That’s real life for most of us, no wonder it resonates with such a huge audience.
Conor will never grow up and leave his mother on the northside of Cork. He’s trapped in a loop of petty crime, and a dig in the ribs instead of hello every time he meets Billy Murphy.
It’s a tragedy when it isn’t funny, which gives the show a dimension missing from a lot of setup/punchline sitcoms.
You’d miss Jock though. The dynamic always worked better when he and Conor were in a hole and kept digging, with Billy sorting them with a solution or a dig in the ribs.
But for all that, the show is still a hug.
Will Conor get back with Linda? That’s not really the point.
The Young Offenders is relatable people spinning around in a daft world on the northside.
They could keep spinning this for a while yet. Don’t miss the latest instalment.
- The Young Offenders returns Friday at 9.30pm on BBC One
