The Inbetweeners

I wouldn't let my kids watch The Inbetweeners last year - and, if you have ever seen the show you'll know why. I was still a bit torn this year whether to take them to see the movie.  I decided against it as it was rated MA and I wanted them to at least understand the characters first and so thought, perhaps, there would come a time to show them the series from beginning to end.

Turns out, they had already seen the movie at their friends' houses!  That sort of thing used make me mad because I had not given any other person permission to show an M15 or MA film to my kids.  It's not that I am big on censorship (I am very liberal - although my kids don't seem to think so - in comparison to everyone else's parents!) but I want to choose the time and place that we watch those kinds of things as a family.  It takes something away from me as a mother when I can't be the one to decide where and when we watch something together. It's all about education.

The Inbetweeners is extremely crude and very rude and often hilariously disgusting.  None of that bothers me as I know that comedy can, and probably should, cut pretty close to the bone if it's going to stay relevant.  I let the kids watch Little Britain a couple of years ago and they were also allowed to watch M-rated South Park and Family Guy eps when they were young teenagers.  But The Inbetweeners was a series I felt needed to wait a little longer in our household before I would give permission.  The main reason for this is the characters are teenagers (hence the title) and I felt the crudeness of it was too extreme for my kids and they used words about sex and women which needed too much discussion before they would understand that it wasn't really sexist so much as highlighting the frustration and anxiety in being at that "in between" stage of life.  We've all been there and that's why it's so funny.  It's exaggerated, of course.  But I didn't want the kids to have their minds blown by any it!

What I hadn't counted on was that they'd already watched the movie at someone else's house.  So, this weekend, we sat down as a family, with my husband as well, and watched series 1 and 2 and the movie.

We laughed like we had never laughed before.  Loud and uncontrolled.  We rolled around in pain on the floor and had to pause the DVD to get over some parts.  It was wonderful.  It truly brought us together as a family.  And those things can't happen if another family has shown it to your kids beforehand.

The kids thought it was going to be awkward watching it with their mum and dad (I know I would have been mortified watching anything like that with my mum or dad! Not that there was ever anything so crude on when I was a teenager - Benny Hill was about as crude as it got - awww, I love Benny Hill. R.I.P Benny) but it wasn't really awkward at all.  It was great.  It opened up discussion and they saw their parents as slightly more human than they were yesterday.  It helps being a high school teacher, though.  Not much shocks me anymore.