A gang of lads, schoolkids, hang around graveyards smoking fags, trying to buy booze, chasing girls, trying to avoid bullies, playing PlayStation 2, and going on trips to look at dead dogs. The first series of Ladhood (BBC3/iPlayer, written by Liam Williams and directed by Jonthan Schey) first aired in November 2019 but it looks back roughly another twenty years from there and though that's still after my teenage time many of the things that happen feel very true.
Narrated by the older Liam (Liam Williams himself), it looks back to the coming of age years of younger Liam (Oscar Kennedy) and his friends, Ralph (Samuel Bottomley), Addy (Aqib Khan), and Craggy (Shaun Thomas) growing up in the Leeds suburb of Garforth.
They take the piss out of each other - but they have each other's backs too - as their lives move on. They get in to drinking on Friday nights and some of them even get their first girlfriends. Ralph, initially the clown of the group, goes out with the prettiest girl in school, Rachel (Emily Coates), and Liam himself builds a relationship with a sweet goth called Katie (Tilly Steele) whom he meets on a creative writing course.
None of which means they are any less at the mercy of local bullies Rupert (Nick Preston) and the bizarrely well informed, well he knows about cooking rice and haemoglobin, Tinhead (Jordan Pearson). But, as many of us will remember from that era of our lives, the bullies are so unavoidable - and often have access to alcohol and parties - that they sort of double up as friends.
Not friends you'd trust though. Friends you'll soon dump (without regret) when your world opens up and you have better options. Which, for Liam, seems only a matter of time. He's into slam poetry, recording music, and is generally creative in his writing. If only he could stop kicking bins when he's angry.
Something which we see has carried on, as has the drinking and potential infidelity, into his adult life. Girlfriend Jess (Lily Frazer) wants Liam to address these issues but he seems, always, to find excuses not to. It seems that in making Ladhood, Liam Williams is reviewing his life. Where he's been, what he's done, and how that has created the person he has become.
At times he looks back nostalgically, even through rose tinted spectacles, but at other times he's embarrassed, shamed even, at some of his behaviour. It's something most of us can identify with, surely? Even when the story touches on his anxiety, his depression, his existential disillusionment, and his over reliance on self-medication. How he's allowed himself to believe his own narrative that he's a fun drunk and not one that passes out or starts fights.
None of this means that Ladhood is drily introspective. It's quite the opposite and it's very funny to boot. When a braying posho tries it on with Liam's girlfriend he wonders why she'd choose to flirt with a person whose first reference for an articulate person is Shakespeare? When Jess retorts that his love rival is twice his size, Liam responds "he's 1.5 times my size. 1.6 at most".
But it's Ralph who gets the lion's share of the laughs. When he tries to get an older man to buy twelve bottles of WKD, ostensibly for his sick grandfather, and when he's caught crossing his legs to disguise a boner at a friend's house. When bullies force Ralph to tell a joke all he can think of is the line "what does a dog do?".
You probably had to be there! A mostly decent, and believable, soundtrack (The Streets, Dizzee Rascal, Dr Dre, The Avalanches, Roots Manuva, Lethal Bizzle, Duran Duran, The Bees, DJ Luck & MC Neat, Double 99's speed garage classic RIP Groove, and, er Chumbawamba) gives Ladhood a timely feel and an episode in which supply teacher Miss Monroe (Katy Wix) shows an interest in Liam and his ambitions is lovely. Especially as most of the other teachers are pricks.
I wish I'd had a teacher like Miss Monroe. She swears, she overshares, she openly admits to not liking the other teachers, and she name drops (Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel) with abandon. To be honest, she's either not very realistic or she won't have lasted very long in the British schooling system
Great though Wix is as Monroe, and enjoyable though Jamali Maddix is in a brief cameo as Brett, it is down to the four young leads, and to Liam Williams himself, that most of the credit must go. Ladhood, as I'd been told, was both very watchable and very enjoyable. Better still, there's two more series waiting for me on that iPlayer.
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