Creator of Big Boys Jack Rooke and leading actor Jon Pointing speak with GAY TIMES about the second season of the hit comedy, why 2014 was a “big old gay year” and why Pointing may just be the “UK’s biggest LGBTQ+ ally”.
WORDS BY ALICE MOREY HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN IMAGES CHANNEL 4 From the ice bucket challenge to the importance of chosen families, the second season of Big Boys has it covered. “It’s what you want from a second series,” star Jon Pointing tells GAY TIMES. “It’s got more of the same, all the characters and their storylines have been expanded and the gaps get filled in.” The acclaimed Channel 4 comedy is set to return 14 January, with creator Jack Rooke once again teaming up with Dylan Llewellyn and Pointing, his long-term friend, as unlikely gay-straight uni duo Jack and Danny.
The triumph of Rooke’s witty, millennial coming-of-age comedy is the nuanced exploration of sexuality, mental health and being a young working class man interwoven into a storyline about friendship, rather than the entire plot hooked on identity. “I don’t solely think of Big Boys as a gay comedy, but I think it is much bigger and much broader.
But I also know that a lot of its roots and a lot of its support base is within my own community, so I am really chuffed for that,” Rooke explains.