Big Boys ends with season 3, but the impact of Jack Rooke's story won't

Together, we've mourned the loss of his father, Laurie, as well as Jack's Straight Best Friend™, Danny, whose fate remains ambiguous right up until the end.

Some loss is hard in a very different sense, though... Case in point: the loss of Jack's virginity, which propels each season of Big Boys just as much as grief.

In fact, that's what propels the success of the show too, the way Rooke so effortlessly navigates tears of pain along with tears of joy (not to mention tears from somewhere else).

Too crude? This is the show where Jack thinks of a Tesco meal deal floating through the air as he imagines having sex for the first time. This is the show where Jack's eye gets poked by a pub DJ's c**k in the loo. This is the show where Jack's school bully sends him pics on Grindr and then tries to film them having sex.

At a time when puritanical viewers are questioning whether sex is even needed on screen, Big Boys goes in big and hard with butt plug escapades and all other manner of sexual hijinks that speak to the reality of gay sex in a way most other shows dare not attempt.

That's vital, because the opposite, to erase or overlook sex entirely, would erase a very integral part of the human experience. This is especially true of queer sex, which deserves to be celebrated in defiance of those who would still call us disgusting.

But Rooke's not afraid to laugh at the absurdity of these carnal desires either, as that floating Tesco meal deal attests, and especially when Jack finally loses his virginity for real.

Just as he's about to do it in a disabled toilet — because they're "more spacious" — the conversation suddenly shifts to his dead dad, which is sort of a mood killer, right? So instead, Jack goes off and finally pops his cherry in a tent on the edge of a cliff while on holiday in Greece of all places. "Like George Michael would have wanted."

Grief and sadness can't be tucked away for a rainy day. There's no ignoring these waves that can resurge at any given moment, and that's true throughout the show, which asks us to laugh at Jack's pretentious beret one minute and sob over Danny's nan in the next.

We know that intuitively, that sadness and joy are more intertwined than we often like to admit, but it's rare to see someone understand that so deftly and capture that feeling as well as Rooke does. And it's even rarer to see that understanding filtered through a specifically gay, British lens.

Where else can a trip to Fleet Services become a source of joy? Where else can you meet a beloved goldfish named Alison Hammond? And perhaps best of all, where could you ever hope to see an entire episode of television dedicated to this George Michael tweet?

While the likes of Heartstopper and Sex Education do admirably centre queer British youth, Big Boys is still entirely unique, forging its own path through a deeply personal, extremely queer story that resonates with wider audiences regardless.

Whether you went to Brent uni or not, whether you're fretting over getting "bummed", as Jack puts it, all of us can relate to anxieties around sex or missing home or even worrying about a friend in trouble.

The fact said friend is straight has long been the show's USP, reminding or even informing people that, yes, gay men and straight men can be besties.

As obvious as that might seem to some viewers, it's not to many others, and that's yet another way in which Big Boys has pioneered a new kind of queer storytelling. Not just in terms of their friendship, but in how the series reflects on that through narration and something even more tangible.

From day one, Rooke has narrated his own story, looking back as Dylan Llewellyn plays his younger self. The real Jack is always present, even if he's not technically on screen. But what makes it even more personal is how the narration directly addresses Danny and us as "you", as if we're a friend right there with him in the moment.

In the season 2 episode Surprise, Surprise!, a shift suddenly comes out of nowhere that pulls us in even further.

"You'd often leave parties without saying goodbye," said Jack as we watched Danny sit alone on a bench to gather his thoughts. "We'd pretend it was because you pulled some fit girl, but we'd all know it's because something in your head's gone on."

Usually, that would be it, but in that moment, Danny looked up, annoyed, and said, "Can we just not?" as if he's just heard Jack's narration first-hand.

This break in reality reminded viewers that this Danny isn't the real Danny who Jack once knew. It's his memory made flesh, a construct created in his mind to help Jack reckon with the absence of a friend long gone.

Fictional Danny and Real Jack began to talk, bending the rules of the show's usually grounded take on reality to speak to something deeper. It wasn't a long conversation, but it was a vital one that the season 2 finale continued after in a similar vein. Except, this time, the dialogue was between Jack and us.

The night when Shannon gave birth and the day when Laurie passed away intertwine. As we watched this full-circle connection between life and death first hand, so too did the real Jack who visibly appeared on screen in a bid to find closure.

By visiting the past so directly in this fictional realm of memory, Jack could finally do all the things he always wanted to but never could in real life, such as drive home from the hospital with his father or say sorry to Danny.

Big Boys could have ended then with a final episode that best encapsulated the show's balance between light and dark, between joy and pain.

But there was still the question of what happened to Danny hanging over the series, as if Jack was coming to terms with what he needed to say yet couldn't quite bring himself to reach that point still.

Thankfully, Channel 4 said yes to a third and final season where Jack could fully reckon with the memory of his best friend and what really happened (along with what he wished could and should have happened as well).

The result is more beautiful and poignant than I have the words to describe, so I won't spoil it for you here. Just know that what happens makes saying goodbye to these characters all the more harder to bear.

It's also tough to bid farewell to the cast, from Izuka Hoyle (Corinne) and Olisa Odele (Yemi) to Harriet Webb (Shannon) and Camille Coduri (Peggy), as well as Annette Badland and Sheila Reid, who played the two nans. How they all nail the show's shifting tones with such warmth is as miraculous as the show itself.

Yet nothing's harder than saying goodbye to Dylan Llewellyn's fictional Jack and Jon Pointing's take on Danny, because saying goodbye to them means saying goodbye to Big Boys itself.

What the final episode proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, though, is that Jack's connection to Danny — and Laurie — will always stay with him, just as the series will endure and continue to resonate with us long after the final episode airs too. In that sense, we've lost nothing. All we've done is gain.

Big Boys season 3 will air at 10pm on Sunday 9th February on Channel 4. The first three episodes are already available to stream on Channel 4+ Premiere.

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