(Content warning: This piece discusses themes of mental health, including references to suicide.)
The first time I finished watching Channel 4’s Big Boys, I cried so hard I burst a blood vessel in my face.
The second time around, my reaction wasn’t quite as severe, but I still couldn’t breathe for a good few minutes afterwards.
What is it about this show, a show about a boy coming to terms with his sexuality at uni, a show about first experiences, Bombay Barbecue Mix, Margate, a fish named Alison Hammond, a show about family and university, that hit me so hard?
This piece has been sitting in my drafts since the show ended last February, because I quite honestly just couldn’t come up with the words to give it justice.
According to the UK government, over 57% of students self-reported a mental health issue. More of us are dropping out. Less of us are disclosing these issues to our universities before it’s too late. In the 2022-2023 academic year, there were 155 suicides amongst HE students in the UK.
Let’s step away from that for a moment.
Big Boys is the semi-fictionalisation of creator Jack Rooke’s years at university. Beginning, well, at the beginning. His first year at Brent Uni (Rooke actually went to Westminster, but, you know, I would be embarrassed to admit that too) begins with a rocky start.
Starting university mere months after the death of your father is pretty rough. Being denied a place in halls, and then being forced to live in a bright blue shed with a lad who is five years older than you could not possibly make that any easier. You can already see how this might strike a chord with some UCL students.
This lad, this beautiful, gentle, loudmouth bastard, very rapidly takes to the centre of young Jack’s story, almost without him (and the audience) even realising it. Dylan Llewellyn’s performance as a younger Jack, struggling to find his place in Brent’s gay scene, is dewy and “clasp-your-hands-together-to-proclaim-awww-bless-him” wonderful, and provides the perfect antithesis to Jon Pointing’s Danny. The show spans three seasons, three years at university, and every manner of life event in between. Births, deaths, relationships, drinking poppers, pouring a man’s mum’s ashes over his dick, heartbreak, Tesco meal deals — everything.
It’s simply the greatest depiction of university I have ever seen.
In between scenes of struggles for second-year housing and dissertations, getting high and having crushes on professors, something lingers in the background. Almost intangible to begin with, and then incessant and devastating and all-consuming.
And man, I don’t know. I just love Danny so much, and watching him slip further and further away from his friends and deeper into that big great black hole of depression made me feel like someone was grabbing my heart and squeezing it repeatedly.
There’s something different about Big Boys, something so intangible I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe something to do with its holistic approach to mental health representation.
It doesn’t romanticise, and it also doesn’t shy away from the uglier aspects of it. Sometimes you go and get pissed with all your mates and have the absolute time of your life. Sometimes you don’t leave your bed for days and then wonder why all your mates are suddenly annoyed at you. Watching it felt like one of those cliché film shots when the character switches the show off and just sees themselves staring back in the black, empty screen.
The fact of the matter is, universities are not doing enough for their students. No, I don’t want Michael Spence to swoop down and solve all my problems immediately. I’m not expecting some random counsellor to come up with a magical solution in six fucking sessions. Students shouldn’t be treated like leftie snowflakes for asking for the bare minimum. As another Cheese Grater voices piece verbalised, the university fails to provide any kind of content or trigger warnings in their teaching materials. For a university so proud of being incredibly diverse, the powers that be seem very reluctant to recognise the huge array of experiences their students bring to the table.
I will never forget the look a professor gave me when I couldn’t verbalise to him why I was struggling to meet an essay deadline — the kind of look that told me my pain was inconvenient, and that his compassion had an unspoken limit.
Give out all the SoRA’s and EC’s you want, it still won’t make the difference it needs to. The average student is living just £2 a week above the destitution line; the average London rent now overtakes the average maintenance loan. I work up to 120 hours a month just to barely stay out of my overdraft. And when we bring these issues up, we are met with indifference, cop out statements or just complete silence. UCL’s emails about the January Blues are very touching, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to see what they actually do to address the mental wellbeing of their students.
57% is way too high, but UCL doesn’t care as long as they can squeeze every last penny out of you — because while the university is quick to publicise its wellbeing strategies, support services, and mental health policies, these promises often collapse at the point of contact. On paper, students are encouraged to ask for help; in practice, they are met with bureaucratic hurdles, long waiting times, and an academic culture that continues to prioritise deadlines, performance, and profit over genuine care. The result is an institution that knows how to speak the language of compassion, but consistently fails to act on it when students need it most.
And, obviously, the elephant in the room — we are in a crisis of masculinity. Our thirteen-year-old cousins think women are property and half their mates don’t think they even deserve rights. The other half of them spend every day trying not to cry for fear of being picked on for it. You don’t need me to tell you this, you already know it. Of course you do.
But that’s what makes shows like these so necessary. They don’t shy away from the truth, nor do they dismiss the consequences when we allow these things to happen unchecked.
Danny’s depression isn’t skirted around and dismissed when it’s not interesting to the narrative; it’s there, and it’s undeniable. The show’s finale is, for lack of a better word, sickening. And a perfect example of what it can look like when we let these things slip under the radar for too long.
Big Boys easily switches between life’s highest highs (in some cases, quite literally) and lowest lows. You can be sat there cackling about Jack’s cousin Shannon (Harriet Webb — give her a fucking knighthood!!!) and then weep in about ninety seconds flat. (...There’s an entirely different piece to be written about working-class British comedy, and how this show executes it perfectly, and how it is amazing and I love it so very much, but maybe another time, because I’m taking the piss with this word count already.)
I’m not going to spoil the ending of the show, because I really, genuinely want every single person reading this to go and watch it if you haven’t already. The Cheese Grater takes no legal responsibility for any burst blood vessels, though. I warned you.
Christ, there’s so much shit to be miserable about right now. And always. Go hug your mates for me xxx