Simon Bird is unsure whether ‘The Inbetweeners’ would still be made today.
The 35-year-old actor shot to fame playing nerdy teenager Will McKenzie in the sitcom – which ran between 2008 to 2010 and spawned two spin-off films in 2011 and 2014 – doesn’t feel the programme’s humour was "misogynistic" but admitted that, in the #MeToo era, some of the jokes would not be well received and if the show was to have been greenlit now, he thinks the characters would be very different.
He said: "I don’t think I was misogynist or a poster boy for that sort of comedy.
"But I do think we were lucky to have a get-out-of-jail-free card in the fact that they were stupid boys.
"It’s a totally valid question whether the show would be made now. Or if it was set now, whether teenagers’ attitudes and language have changed. I hope so."
As a result, Simon admitted it is unlikely he and his co-stars will ever return to their roles on the show because their attitudes would be "problematic" if they hadn’t changed with age.
Asked about the possibility of a reunion in the future, he told the Sunday Times Culture magazine: "I just can’t believe it [would happen].
"There have been other shows where they’ve had those reunions much later, and the joke or the setup is still fundamentally the same, whereas with ‘The Inbetweeners’ the joke was that these were kids.
"They were saying and doing terrible things, but they got away with it because they weren’t yet fully formed out. And when they are fully formed out, it will become more problematic."