It was not the reunion episode they were expecting
The Inbetweeners was first aired on E4 back in May 2008 – meaning that the show is now a decade old.
To mark the occasion, Channel 4 announced a special reunion show to be shown on New Year’s Day.
Tonight. 9pm. Channel4.
The Inbetweeners reunion. Celebrating 10 years of playing idiots.
Hosted by @jimmycarr
Great catching up with these guys again.#fwendsreunited #NewYearsDay pic.twitter.com/x65wWXQ55K— blake harrison (@blakeharrison23) January 1, 2019
This, understandably got some fans very, very excited – Will, Simon, Jay and Neil hadn’t been seen on our screens together since The Inbetweeners 2 in 2014.
To be fair, we should state, Channel 4 never said this was going to be a proper episode. Instead, it was always meant to be just a nostalgic reunion show, getting the full cast back together to joke about and tell stories.
And that’s what we got. Hosted by Jimmy Carr, Fwends Reunited was filmed in front of a studio audience, and had Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, Blake Harrison, and James Buckley reminisce about making the show.
I’m hosting The Inbetweeners: Fwends Reunited show tonight at 9pm on @Channel4. pic.twitter.com/Y70LRVP1JV
— Jimmy Carr (@jimmycarr) January 1, 2019
They came out in a yellow Fiat Cinquecento, they gave out some awards, they tried to stuff Joe Thomas into a suitcase. It was perfectly acceptable, bland TV to watch while recovering from a big New Year’s Eve.
However, a lot of people were not happy about it. At all.
Many viewers thought it was going a full-on new episode – and thus were pretty pissed when they basically just got a clip show.
https://twitter.com/DanGasser/status/1080207857008738309
Watching the Inbetweeners reunion and dividing my time between pissing myself laughing and wanting to vom at the amount of cringe, awkward interviews
— Rhianna Dhillon (@RhiannaDhillon) January 1, 2019
This #inbetweeners thing isn’t quite what I thought it would be…
— markdennison 💙 (@markdennison) January 1, 2019
…was I the only one who thought #FwendsReunited was gonna be a new inbetweeners episode? 👎
— Jonno Turner (@jonnot) January 1, 2019
There was me excited and expecting to see a 2 hour film/episode of the inbetweeners to turn the programme on and see it’s a bloody talk show. False advertisement 😠#TheInbetweenersFwendsReunited
— Liam Shephard (@Liam_Shep2) January 1, 2019
#FwendsReunited was painfully bad. Greg Davies should’ve hosted it. #Inbetweeners
— Sarah O'Connell (@SarahO_Connell) January 2, 2019
#Fwendsreunited was really overhyped. Give us another #Inbetweeners series instead.
— Jono Read (@jonoread) January 1, 2019
Like we sent – it was never advertised as such – but when you see the words “Inbetweeners” and “reunion”, we can see why people jumped to conclusions.
Always read the descriptions in your TV guides thoroughly, kids.