To balance truth and story and create a finale that satisfies both endings is an amazing tightrope to walk.” For the scene – one of the televisual moments of the year already – Rooke and Archer changed the aspect ratio to create a visual separation from the show’s widescreen, sitcom aesthetic and allowed the conversation to run for over seven minutes.
The “suicide s***” to which Rooke alludes, is a spectre that has hung over Big Boys from the off and was at the heart of the material Rooke developed for the Edinburgh Fringe.
“Jack always had that scene in his head from day one,” Big Boys’s director Jim Archer tells me via email.
A final sequence, in which Rooke (the man, not the character) enters the narrative, to speak to Danny on a bench overlooking the sea in Margate, is a moment that will stand alongside those rare instances when comedy transcends its genre constraints.
The final two episodes of Big Boys are the culmination, comedically and emotionally, of this story Rooke has been working on for a decade.
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