James Buckley and Joe Thomas, the stars of The Inbetweeners, are reuniting for a Channel 4 documentary that tackles the show’s favorite subject from the other side: what adulthood looks like once the sixth-form years are long gone.
The working title is Joe and James: Boys to Men. The two will front a travelogue-style road trip, at home and abroad, to find out how adult life works and how to reach midlife without a crisis. The pair bring opposing temperaments, as they did on screen, and the format leans on that friction.
Channel 4 commissioning editor Vivienne Molokwu said “the chemistry between Joe and James is undeniable” and framed the premise as the question of what to do when you are too old to be young but too young to be old.
Idle Industries produces with Fudge Park, the company behind the original sitcom. Inbetweeners co-creator Damon Beesley and Will Macdonald, the former head of Monkey who founded the BBC Studios-backed Idle Industries last year, are the producers.
The timing follows the franchise’s return to the spotlight. A third Inbetweeners film is heading to Netflix, and both Thomas and Buckley appear in it. The series began on E4 in 2008, when its leads were in their early twenties playing late teenagers, and it produced three series and two cinema releases, in 2011 and 2014. The first film set a UK record for the biggest opening weekend for a comedy.
The documentary sidesteps a question the cast has long faced. Buckley, now 39, dismissed the idea of a revival in 2023, calling it “sad and pathetic” for grown men to play teenagers. A 2019 reunion special drew a poor response from fans. A documentary in which the actors appear as themselves avoids the trap of dressing middle-aged men in school uniforms.
The two have kept working together. They co-starred in the sitcom White Gold and host a comedy podcast, Joe and James Fact Up, where their banter has built a following of its own. Since 2008 both have taken on a range of projects outside the show that made them famous.
Channel 4 has not announced a transmission date.
