The boys are back, although calling them boys requires considerably more generosity than it did in 2008. Netflix confirmed on September 7 that The Inbetweeners 3 has entered production in the UK.

Simon Bird returns as Will McKenzie, James Buckley as Jay Cartwright, Blake Harrison as Neil Sutherland and Joe Thomas as Simon Cooper. There is no replacement cast and no next-generation setup in the announcement. Netflix is going straight back to the original four.

Netflix knew exactly which car to bring out first

The production announcement leans shamelessly into one of the show's most recognisable objects. The battered yellow and red 1996 Fiat Cinquecento Hawaii is back, with the four characters climbing inside before struggling to get the thing started.

A large number 3 appears on the rear window. There is no plot explanation, no montage of new characters and very little effort to pretend this is anything other than a reunion.

It works.

The original writers are returning as directors

Damon Beesley and Iain Morris created the Channel 4 sitcom and will both write and direct the new movie. That gives the revival an important degree of continuity beyond simply putting four familiar actors together for a nostalgia exercise.

Claire Jones is producing alongside Banijay's Patrick Holland and Fudge Park Production's Mark Lesbirel, with Film4 also involved. Netflix has not announced a release date or revealed the story.

« It's been super-fun hanging out with our friends again, and we're going to work hard every week to ensure there are no problemos making this new film for humans. »

Beesley and Morris are apparently not using the occasion to become more dignified.

Twelve years is a long time between terrible holidays

The original sitcom ran from 2008 to 2010, following four painfully ordinary suburban teenagers through school, friendship, drinking, romantic disasters and an impressive quantity of humiliation.

It then made an unusually successful jump to cinemas. The Inbetweeners Movie arrived in 2011 and set a UK opening record for a British comedy at the time. The Inbetweeners 2 followed in 2014 and was another major box-office success.

Nothing about the franchise has been particularly active on screen since then, but it never completely vanished either. Streaming gave the show a long afterlife, which makes the Netflix arrangement fairly easy to understand: an old British television hit now comes with both nostalgia and a new audience that discovered it years after E4 stopped making episodes.

The real question is what Jay looks like in middle age

The most obvious creative problem is also the best reason to make the film. The Inbetweeners was built around boys desperately pretending to be more mature, experienced and desirable than they actually were. Bird, Buckley, Harrison and Thomas are now men in their forties.

Simply repeating the same jokes would miss the point rather spectacularly. The useful version of this reunion is one that discovers how much, or how little, Will, Jay, Neil and Simon have changed after more than a decade of adult life.

Netflix has given no clues yet. No marriages have been announced, no children, careers, divorces or midlife disasters. Even the supporting cast remains largely under wraps.

A very Netflix kind of revival

For Netflix, a feature film is a relatively neat way to resurrect the property. The company gets an established British comedy brand, the complete core cast and an event that does not require committing to another full television run.

There is still a fine line to walk. The original characters could be spectacularly immature because they were teenagers. Four middle-aged men behaving exactly the same way would be a different proposition entirely, and not automatically a funnier one.

For now, the strongest sign that Beesley and Morris understand that problem is simply that they are back themselves rather than handing the characters to somebody else.

Production is underway. The Fiat survived.