Inbetween Days:Ladhood S3.

"I wanna smoke weed and stay up 'til 5am watching my Family Guy box set .... like a proper adult" - Liam

Therein lies the rub of the entire three series' of Liam Williams' Ladhood. The idea that these teenage boys imagine the life in front of them to essentially consist of doing teenage things except with more money and less telling off by parents or other authority figures. Ladhood does a great job in showing how British teenage boys, either by tradition or by their own volition, are in many ways supremely unsuited to becoming grown ups.

Series 3 (BBC3/iPlayer - directed by Ruth Pickett), the third and final series, isn't as laugh out loud funny as the first two. It's still brilliantly observed but there's a more pensive feel to it. It's more emotional. Regretful even. Older Liam (Liam Williams himself) is 34 years old and life's not going the way he'd hoped it would.

He's still renting but when his landlord puts his rent up he has to find somewhere new to live and in London that's neither easy nor cheap. He can't even buy a flat whose last owner was a serial killer (pipped to it by podcasters, naturally) and he doesn't fancy, as his parents suggest, moving back to Leeds.

 

Work's not bringing him any satisfaction either. Working as a 'creative' for an advertising agency, he's tasked with thinking of things that a talking toilet might say and forced to attend bullshit meetings about 'GROWING HORIZONTALLY' with his dimwitted boss Toby (David Mumeni). When he has to go through a section explaining "Why I Add Value" it stirred some painful memories.

Remarkably, he's promoted and given a new account for a gambling company represented by Maria (Mariam Haque). But, much as he needs the money, he knows what he's doing is at best unnecessary and at worst unethical. So he quits which leaves him in even bigger trouble. Again, I felt seen.

To make sense of all this he, as ever, revisits his past and appears, as ever, as a spectre in the life of the younger Liam (Oscar Kennedy). Whose position is not too dissimilar. Younger Liam is also without a job and he uses the fact that he got four As in his A-levels as an excuse for anything. From going on the piss before lunchtime to using eggs as golf balls.

His friends, unlike Liam, are earning. Ralph (Samuel Bottomley) has become a door to door salesman, Craggy (Shaun Thomas) works at the local garden centre which has resulted in him becoming an expert on compost, and Addy (Aqib Khan), despite being at sixth form with Liam, works part time in his parent's fish tank shop.

The four of them commit to getting a house together but despite it being Liam's idea initially he's the one who ends up pulling out when he gets an offer to apply for a place at either Oxford or Cambridge. Ralph, Addy, and Craggy do end up getting a place and Liam spends most of his time there. Drinking their beer, eating their chips, and sleeping on their couch.

Without paying of course. His parents (Rosie Cavaliero plays his mum June and Neil Edmond is sudoku obsessed dad Simon) want him to concentrate on his studies and get into Cambridge (it's an easier drive than Oxford from Leeds) but Liam's not interested in either his studies or going to university and eventually takes a part time job at Pizza Tent where his new boss is Craggy's sister Lucy (Georgia Hughes).

Being the BBC, I guess, they can't call it Pizza Hut. With a soundtrack of Dead Prez, Kano, Hot Chip, The Streets (of course), Take That, Justice, Anderson .Paak, Dr Dre, Sugababes, Daft Punk, and Lethal Bizzle we follow Liam, teenage and mid-thirties, on his adventures through life and see how he tries to make sense of it. We wish for him to succeed but often his behaviour is frustrating. Older Liam rolls his eyes at some of younger Liam's mistakes but we get to see how older Liam is, more or less, repeating those same errors.

It sounds quite depressing but it's done so well it never is. We hear tales of non-fungible tokens of giraffes playing saxophones, an alcohol free absinthe that (whoops) has alcohol in it, and an ayahuasca cleanse with a load of hedge fund managers in Chelsea. There's a Steve Pemberton cameo in a Clapton allotment, there's references to Apocalypse Now, There Will Be Blood, Salt Bae, Paul Ince, and even Smiles (yes, potato Smiles) and there's even a pretty decent magic mushroom trip which despite not being quite on the level of Bojack Horseman's experience with hallucinogens does finally lead to both Liams meeting each other. Predictably, they don't get on and the series, and the show, ends with the perennial question hanging. Will Liam ever learn to accept himself?