A chicken on 'Chickens'

Today I finally got round to watching the new offering from the brains behind the wildly successful ‘The Inbetweeners’ that was a breakout hit on Channel 4 a few years ago that was a perfect antidote to ‘Skins’ and rather than cast a group of too cool for school teenagers running around taking drugs, having plenty of sex and staying up all night it showed me my own pre-university years in full glorious HD where any fun usually had to happen before midnight when I was due home and the only sex I was having was with myself and the strongest drugs that I could get my hands on were caffeine, and I didn’t even like coffee.

Simon, Will and Neil is that you?

Recently, I read the exemplary book We Will Not Fight by Will Ellsworth-Jones on the conscientious objectors during World War I and began to sympathise with the young men who although they refused to fight were embroiled in a war of their own between their conscience and the views of their communities. I consider myself a bit of a “conchie” (read coward) and hope that it a world with professional armies and peaceful democracies I will never need take up arms as I don’t think that it would sit very well with me. Wrestling with my own worries of war I became interested in the topic and began to become very interested in the men who daily had to have white feathers pressed into their hands and the lengths that they would go either for their political, religious or moral views.  So I settled in to watch what I sure would be a witty ride through a village in 1914 that would have me equally laughing and thinking about the men who couldn’t fight in the First World War seeing them in a different light. I was disappointed.

We have a problem in the UK that we seem to glorify the horrendous conflict that occurred between 1914 and 1918 on mainland Europe that killed millions and can be argued as the first time that war was performed on an industrial scale. We call it the “Great War” and remember it with the words of Siegfried Sasoon and bibles stopping snipers bullets. We reduce it to “our boys” fighting against the evil “Hun” who ate babies and worshiped the devil. If anything we were doing France a favour by driving out the “Boche” and restoring order in mainland Europe. As Winston Churchill said: “History is written by the victors” and it’s only written that way because we won. In another reality we would hear how Germany was entitled to the same great Empire that the once great nation of Britain had and because Africa was taken and America was now on its own the only place left to invade was across the border. It was only what everyone else was doing at the time. But this isn’t a history lesson, this is a review of ‘Chickens’ (but I promise that we’ll come back to this later.)

“Conchies” didn’t just not fight out of fear, or this radical idea that killing another human being for whatever reason might not sit well on his religious or moral conscience. Often socialists out of political principals refused to shoot at their fellow man because it would be possibly killing another socialist brother. They believed (like all good “pinkos” do) that wars are fought for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. The poor and well-meaning are sent to do battle against the ideologically different and brainwashed for another either to make those back at home richer or simply prove that one system is better than the other. If the “proletariat” who would form the majority of the rank and file of the army collectively laid down their weapons it would be impossible to have a war as no matter how many bullets there were with no one to fire them it would be a very quiet front line. However, this isn’t a lesson in socialist international politics this is a review of ‘Chickens’ (but I promise that we’ll come back to this later.)

Simon Bird and Joe Thomas are very, very bright guys having both graduated from Oxford and I’m sure they know all of the above. I understand that they need to make it funny but they’ve missed a huge chance to make the comedy relevant and socially biting as well. Instead they decide to recycle their tried and tested ‘Inbetweeners’ banter. Simon (oops I mean George) is still chasing after a girl who doesn’t want to be with him, Will (oops I mean Cecil) is the well-meaning looser who just really wants to be at the front but being a little flat footed and short he has to resort to darning socks with the WI in the village, and Neil (Whoops I mean Bert) is the mentally challenged idiot who just wants to get laid. You can see the formula, and don’t get me wrong it was good the first time but it’s now time to move on. Could it be that we are actually looking at the great-grandparents of the gormless teenagers from the popular show?

Some of it is funny, but not the laugh out loud funny, or the; this is getting so awkward I’m going to have to hide behind the sofa funny. It raises a titter and nothing more. The comedy comes in the treatment that the three heroes face at the hands of the female only population of the village burning effigies of them and general snide remarks of their lack of manhood at a time when their country needs them most. The milklady is a particular favourite hurling their day’s rations at the wall of their graffiti daubed house.

Maybe because I am passionate about the subject I wanted more from the show. Less knob gags and more of a look at the endlessness of war that this century finds itself in (especially relevant as it seems that we are being sold the same story of Iraq again over the current conflict in Syria, admittedly with a little more evidence this time). Comedy after all is most successful when it says something about the times we live in, and it may be 1914 in the village but I’m sure that the parallels can’t be seen in today’s conflicts. But this is “light entertainment” so we might as well just tell a couple of jokes about how men are desperate for sex and have a little misunderstanding about a hankie. Maybe if Will’s [damn it Cecil) has a hot mom – that’d be funny wouldn’t it?!