Positive review (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/feb/24/gap-year-review-silly-puerile-good-way-travelling)
Ugh, travellers. As in young people who go off round Asia or South America or wherever, with their Lonely bloody Planet guides, in search of mind-broadening new experiences. Like these people in
Gap Year (E4).
I had one once, a gap year – actually about five years – and I hated myself, too, as well as all the other people doing it. But I have often thought that it’s been neglected as a source of comedy. Now
Plebs (huge guilty pleasure!) writer Tom Basden is putting that right.
“You’re all into the same shit,” the older, drunker travel writer lady tells Dylan and Sean on the plane to Beijing. Exactly, though some things have changed since my travelling days. There are mobile phones and the internet, so everyone is basically in touch wherever they are.
Some things seem to be the same though, reassuringly – such as travellers are still obsessed with their own bowel movements, literally into the same shit, the consistency and frequency thereof. And ticking stuff off, attractions, experiences. And finding the real India, Vietnam or Bolivia; so it becomes a kind of competition about how far you can get away from other people just like you in search of authenticity. I once spent a night in a filthy hovel on a very untouristy (possibly because of the adjacent oil refinery) island off Venezuela while a burly, rummed-up fisherman attempted to have sex with me. All night. Very real, but also really horrible. And his boat was the only way off the island … Anyway, that’s a different story.
Basden has put together a nice cast of characters. Sean’s an amiable English lad, on a lad’s trip, with his old mate, escaping from the humdrum of his life at home. He’s actually a wheely suitcaser, as opposed to a backpacker, and would be better off in Thailand than China, as the travel writer on the plane said. But Dylan has brought him to Beijing, on false pretences as it happens: he’s stalking his ex (on her “track my run” app, ha, nice touch).
Then there are Americans Ashley, who’s a good-time girl, and May, who isn’t. She has been sent to China by her mother to explore her Asian roots. Tagging along with the girls, not entirely (really not, especially by May) welcome, is my favourite Greg (
Tim Key), who is English, likes cricket, is a little bit creepy and a bit tragic and far too old to be doing this kind of thing. He’s a bit like Dan, the Joe Wilkinson character, in
Him & Her. Oh, and then there are a couple of Irish backpacking honeymooners, who don’t play a massive part in this opener but whom I hope we will be seeing more of, mainly because Mrs is played by
Aisling Bea and will nick any scene she’s in.
They all kind of hook up, and get on, and don’t get on, and try to unhook up, or hook up more. The comedy is about cultural difference, and cliches about traveller types – not massively surprising maybe, but very nicely observed. I think Basden might have been on the road himself. Greg has one of those probably practical but really annoying head torches, and wants to play football with the locals (“Hey guys, I’ll have a piece of this!”).
May thinks that the music festival they go to isn’t Chinese enough; and she wants to get up at 5.30 in the morning to see the wall – the great one – at sunrise. Do you think, in 2,000 years’ time or so, Asian tourists visiting ancient monuments in the once powerful world civilisation of the United States will get up early to see the great wall there at sunrise? The one Emperor Donald built to keep out marauding criminals, drug dealers and rapists from the south? Possibly.
The dialogue is good and believable, and funny: “I’m honestly not trying to be a dick,” Dylan tells his mate. “Well try a bit harder,” moans Sean.
Sean calls Dylan by his school nickname, Dildo (which is what it would have been), though Dylan doesn’t appreciate it any more – he thinks it might be offensive to women. The ex he’s stalking has a new love interest, a convivial sporty American, who calls himself Social Norm. Oh and at the music festival there’s a capsizing festival toilet. Toppled over, by Sean, while occupied, by Dylan. More of the same shit, all over the place.
Gap Year is very silly and very puerile, and I mean both in a good way. A Plebs way. Hey guys, I’ll have a piece of this: mind if I tag along, too?
Negative review (http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-02-23/angst-laughs-and-fun-in-the-sun-with-e4s-gap-year)
Over the years Channel 4 and their youth branch E4 have built a reputation on strong young adult comedy, from the likes of
Fresh Meat and The Inbetweeners to Misfits and Drifters – and for the most part, new series
Gap Year shows that they haven’t lost their touch.
As you'd guess from the title, Gap Year follows a group of students (and one or two weird adults) as they travel around Asia, getting into the usual sort of scrapes – trouble with locals, language barriers, food poisoning, fights with their travelling companions – familiar to anyone who’s spent time backpacking with friends.
Anders Hayward plays Dylan, the hopeless romantic intent on tracking down his horrible ex (Rachel Redford), Ade Oyefuso is his class clown friend-from-home looking for a good time, while Brittney Wilson and Alice Lee play a pair of US students (one free-spirited, one uptight) along for the faintly nightmarish ride.
So far, so familiar. But there are a few things that elevate this series slightly above the cliché. First off there’s the cast, which includes veteran comedians like Tim Key (playing a man who tags along with the younger travellers) and Aisling Bea (who dips in and out as a woman on a terrible honeymoon) alongside the newer faces mentioned above.
Key and Bea perform as well as you’d expect (they’re very funny), but the inclusion of lesser-known stars adds an air of authenticity to proceedings, with most of the young cast roughly the same age as the characters they’re portraying. E4 has always had a knack for plucking great young actors out of obscurity – just look at this year’s Oscar nominations featuring Skins’ Dev Patel and Misfits’ Ruth Negga – and Gap Year continues the tradition nicely.
Authenticity also comes to the series by other means – namely, the fact that the show actually filmed in Asia for four months, with the opening episode featuring some gorgeous scenes shot on the Great Wall of China itself and future episodes travelling to Thailand and Malaysia. Filming in China was reportedly tricky and production was almost shut down by local authorities once or twice, but those difficulties end up paying dividends onscreen as our heroes walk through the jungles of Malaysia and the smog-choked streets of Beijing.
In the end, though, all the good casting and location work in the Eastern hemisphere wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t a good script to work with, so credit to Tom Basden (previously a writer of
Plebs, Fresh Meat and Peep Show among other series, as well as an actor in W1A and the David Brent movie) for creating a fitfully funny and honest tale apparently drawn from the real-life experiences of his own and others (Key is among some of the other writers involved).
Appropriately given Basden’s writing background, fans of Fresh Meat will find a lot to love here, as it’s a similar mix of sentiment, excess and relatable humour, albeit in quite a different setting and with even more outlandish action week to week.
Of course, it’s not a perfect creation – one or two jokes fall flat, for a first episode it's disappointedly light on belly laughs and the younger leads can sometimes come off as earnest to the point of irritation – but overall it’s a fun watch that I’m keen to see more of as the series goes on.
Personal opinion
Well we just watched one chapter of this series but it looks quite good. It's a steriotyped story in which steriotyped characters appear, but the focus on the way this tale is told is pretty fresh. In terms of quality, both auditive and sonor is guaranteed (in the end it's a good company that created it), but as I said before sterotypes and cliches are good in a moderated way, but this is too much. It really feels like you know what's almost to happen and in certain points it's pretty boring and it's jokes unfunny, but it's a series destinated to all publics, and we can't expect extreme quality series though it's a decent one. In any case, worth a visit and probably you won't get really bored.
