Like so many great comedies, Funboys is an idiosyncratic, gently nurtured, quietly horrific thing. The creation of RyanDylan and Rian Lennon, who also play two of its main characters, it began life as a 14-minute film – small but perfectly formed – that premiered at the BBC Two comedy festival two years ago. Now, with cast nicely broadened and content nicely deepened, it has become a series. We follow the three “emotionally unassembled” twentysomethings – Callum Brown (Dylan), Jordan McCafferty (Lennon) and Lorcan Boggin (Lee R James) – whose earnestness belies their self-chosen funboys moniker, as they attempt to assemble and entertain themselves with the sparse resources on offer in the tiny town of Ballymacnoose, Northern Ireland.
Callum is no longer engaged to his ultra-religious fiancee Morgan (Emer O’Connor), but the gang is disturbed and astonished when an English girl, Gemma (Ele McKenzie), arrives in town and promptly makes Callum her boyfriend. “Strong, rugged, good-looking,” she tells him. “I’m sick of that rubbish.” Jordan quickly gets very drunk to cope with his friend’s absence from their group gaming sessions. “I’m worried about Callum’s post-nut depression,” he insists. “I don’t want that for you, Callum.”
