With the recent announcement that The Inbetweeners creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley will be bringing their next comedy Afternoons to BBC 2, it’s time to talk about an expected air date. We’ll also be getting announcements about the cast relatively soon and the trailer, theme song and more details on the episodes won’t be too far behind, so here’s our take on it all in the build up to the premier.
What we know already about BBC 2’s Afternoons
The new comedy will be the first project penned by Morris and Beesly since The Invetweeners and like the Channel 4 hit, Afternoons will feature 6 30-minute episodes. Although, this time around, there will be no ads to take up the time as it’ll be coming to BBC 2, so hopefully there will be even more comic genius to enjoy.
The new series is being put together by Fudge Park, which also produced another recent BBC comedy debut, White Gold, written by Damon Beesley, Chris Neil and Joe Thomas. It’s also got a little powerhouse executive producer creds with Emmy award-winning Tom Werner (Roseanne, That ‘70s Show) joining Caroline Leddy (The Inbetweeners, Derry Girls) behind the scenes.
Story
The Afternoons story will revolve around the mostly off-the-pitch highs, lows and calamities of three professional football players. They play for a fictional Premier League team apparently, so we’re looking forward to seeing the name that Beesley and Morris cone up with. Our shout goes to Chiswick United or Moss Side Athletic, but we should find out for real when the cast gets announced in the coming months.
The trio are friends from around the world, all playing in the same team. While they’ve got things sussed on the pitch, they’re efforts with their bank balance, lady loves and Twitter will get them into all sorts of tricky situations throughout the first series.
Air date?
While details are thin on the ground in terms of an air date for Afternoons, that doesn’t stop us from throwing educated assumptions into the mix. Firstly, a second series of White Gold came out in March 2019. As it’s also produced by Fudge Park, and Beesley is the creator and co-writer, it’s likely that there will be a decent gap between the two, so we’re not expecting Afternoons to land too much earlier than summer 2019.
Added to that is the fact that both White Gold and The Inbetweeners made their debuts in May, so it stands to reason that the new show is being planned just ahead of the summer holidays. We’ve also had no details as of yet about the cast, so it’s yet another reason not to expect the show in the next few months.
Theme song and music
While there’s no theme song or trailer tracks to go on for Afternoons as of yet, we’ve got high expectations with The Inbetweeners setting the bar skywards with the instrumental version of Gone Up In Flames by Morning Runner. The first series also featured music from Arctic Monkies, Vampire Weekend, Gorillaz, Hot Chip, Belle & Sebastian, The Libertines and The Cure to name but a few, so again we should be in for a great supporting soundtrack to go with the theme song.
In addition to their work on The Inbetweeners, Beesley and Morris also co-wrote episodes for Flight if the Concords, which was heavily influenced by music. Afternoons should continue the theme, but with the story focusing on the lives of footballers, we’re not expecting too much in the way of original songs. However, the other possibility is that it will have a new theme song every week, which is the case for White Gold.
Cast
As mentioned above, no cast details have been announced for the upcoming comedy as of yet. However, we know that Beesley has got a history of featuring The Inbetweeners cast in their follow up creations. Both James Buckley and Joe Thomas star in White Gold, so we could well see one of them, Blake Harrison or Simon Bird picking up yet another credit here. Although, it would probably be more interesting for one of the support cast to get into the mix with Emily Attack, Emily Head, Henry Lloyd-Hughes or Belinda Stewart-Wilson as the top contenders.
