Funboys creators on their new BBC comedy: 'We're just weird little guys'

The four-part series, which was written by Ryan Dylan and Rian Lennon, who also play Callum and Jordan, grew out of a short film that was released in 2023 and a lot of the "surreal" comedy they enjoy watching, such as This Country, Stath Lets Flats and Limmy.

"And we're just weird little guys," added Lennon.

Like This Country and Stath, the setting is forgettable and the boys' lives are, for the most part, utterly tragic, which doesn't sound like great comedy fodder.

But that "nice broad landscape" gave them a plethora of scenarios to play with, from a dodgy sexual encounter on a swan pedalo to the pitfalls of a pet pig.

"We knew we could do something funny from the sketches, we knew that we could be funny together," said Dylan.

"Then it was about finding the right landscape, a town that maybe hasn't been seen before, a small town, not a city, not a Belfast or a Derry, where you really meet these weird characters."

But the backdrop, while unremarkable, allows the writing to be the opposite.

"The tone of the humour is the melodrama, they take everything so seriously," said Lennon. "Like the hand job in the first episode [on the aforementioned pedalo]. It tears the whole friendship group apart.

"And I think when you have characters that are as melodramatic as that, you need to almost find a particularly mundane setting to contrast that and to bring out the humour."

Lennon compared its unique tone to a "'90s soap filtered through those weirder comedy sensibilities".

"The soap element lends itself to the... fantastical, surreal dialogue. Like, some of the dialogue in soaps is just, like, no one's ever saying that.

"And this is a similar thing. It leans into the melodrama."

But when Callum, Jordan and Lorcan aren't catastrophising or trying but failing to "emotionally communicate with each other", they can often be found kicking back with a plate of chicken nuggets and some quality video game time.

"That's just fun and wholesome, and the mundane becoming just funny and wholesome," said Dylan of the show's celebration of life's simple pleasures.

"And you kind of want to join them. They're so inoffensive, you feel safe around them."

There's another scene when they're sat on a hill together in the sunshine, eating pizza and guzzling pop.

"It's actually nice to just do those things, we want that to come across," added Lennon.

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But most of the time, it's carnage, with plenty of scope for more.

"We have a lot of ideas [for more episodes]," said Lennon. "By the end of those four, it felt like we were just starting to really grow in confidence with it.

"So we would love to do another season. I think if we got another season, it would be bigger, better, more pigs."

Funboys is available to stream now on BBC Three.

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