Ten Years of 'Coming of Age' – Hands Down the Worst Comedy Ever

Photo courtesy of the BBC.

Every now and then, something comes along in your life and it changes how you see things. It's like that bit in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where Cameron Frye stands dumbstruck in front of Georges Seurat's balmy opus A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, transfixed by its beauty, in awe of the little painted girl who stares deeply into him, as she will countless others for the rest of time.

It was this kind of art-induced catatonia that I experience back in 2007 when I first witnessed the BBC3 comedy Coming of Age. I daresay I've never been the same since.

Where to begin with a programme whose first non-pilot episode was entitled "B… lowjob" and first series finale called "Pussy Boy"? Coming of Age is aptly titled. It was created by Tim Dawson when he was just 19, and, visually, lies somewhere between Tracey Beaker and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps – a show Dawson also wrote for. It had the typical modern British sitcom glow. These days, Dawson is getting a little more political than calling episodes of his now defunct TV show "Dick and Fanny", recently stating that if you vote for Jeremy Corbyn you're endorsing the recent suicide bombing at Manchester's MEN Arena.

But no such political engagement is present in Coming of Age. Quite the opposite. Even by BBC3's standards, the show was unimaginably puerile. But it wasn't done with the same low-level charm that, say, The Inbetweeners achieved, where a crass and slightly unfunny gross-out gag was rewarded by a well-placed piece of physical comedy, or an actually structurally sound gag. Watching Coming of Age was like being trapped in a locker in a school full of particularly stupid teenagers.

And, in many ways, that's exactly what it was.

Aesthetically it was also a troubling show. It not only had that cheap Britcom sheen – the immediately noticeable hallmark of something unfunny – but the sixth form school interiors. Add to that the brightly coloured plastic furniture and palpable fug of cheap disinfectant, and Coming of Age becomes a stomach-churning 4D experience.

You could argue that to belittle Coming of Age in such a way is to miss the point somewhat: the show was wildly popular with its target audience when the first series debuted, with weekly viewing figures of 1.2 million and a top ten place on BBC's iPlayer. It's a stupid programme popular with people when they're developmentally at their most stupid – enough smarts to understand concepts, but opting for crap infantilism anyway.

This isn't to say that teens should be watching Pasolini films, either. The reason it's sad they were so into Coming of Age isn't because it's low-brow; it's because it's fucking terrible. It's weak, lazy, poorly thought out and mired in stereotypes. The "chav" character Darren "DK" Karrimore, complete with Fila tracksuit and two lines shaved into his eyebrow, is an aspiring rapper, but appears as if he's been written by a 48-year-old man in 1989, not a 19-year-old in 2007. He says "wicky-wah". When he completes a rhyme he does a performative head-nod-arms-wrapped-around-torso combo, like a pisstaking dad mocking his child's admiration of Kanye West. You wonder how a young person can be so tone deaf to the realities of being a teen, other than just parping out clunge and cum jokes ad nauseam.

Perhaps it's not all Tim Dawson's fault. I mean, most of it is, but undoubtedly his shit show would have been backed up by equally oblivious and greedy executives, whose remit at BBC3 has – and seems always to have been, besides a few notable exceptions – make the worst thing possible and see if the morons will lap at the trough.

Is it unfair to single out Coming of Age as being the worst? Other programmes in the course of British history have committed worse crimes thematically, right? In a word: no. A scene in which a Welshman falls asleep during a meditation and wakes up exclaiming, "Did I fall asleep with my cock in you?!" takes only being able to speak and write English to achieve.

In many ways, being rubbish is worse than being offensive – it's a type of offence in and of itself. Does anything really chill the skin and churn the gut more than sitting in a silent family living room as a putrescent sitcom staggers into a bottomless pit, clattering on the rocky sides as it falls deeper and deeper into the chasm of obscurity? I think not.

@joe_bish

UPDATE: This article has been amended for editorial clarity.

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