Big Boys spoilers follow.
Big Boys mixes themes of grief and mental illness, about which its writer Jack Rooke is passionate. Still, it also seamlessly integrates a far more rare element of representation – the messy disabled person.
This wonderful six-part comedy-drama follows the story of Jack (Dylan Llewellyn), based on creator Rooke's own coming-of-age years. As he leaps into university, he shares accommodation with Danny (Jon Pointing) – a mature student who wants a wingman to help pull "fit birds".
Cue an unlikely friendship, at least by TV standards, as they support each other while steering through grief, sexuality, mental-health issues and daytime television. With Rooke’s narration, this is poignant, important television.
It's also unflinchingly honest in its portrayal of Debs (Rhiannon Clements), a recognisable part of the alcohol-soaked tapestry of university life, one of the characters you meet along the way who become Facebook friends and background memories.
In her final scene, one of those small glimpses many of us can recall from our own time in Freshers Week, Deb gets thrown out of a nightclub because she is carrying a knife in her bag. She argues, indignantly, that she used it at a charity bake sale, saying "there are crumbs on the blade". It's a small moment but powerful because it feels like a new type of representation for disabled people.
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As the messy, honest disabled person, Deb is brash, unapologetic and unconcerned, and crucially, she's not defined by her shortened left forearm.
Before the media offered this representation, I knew her because all human life is represented in the disability community, even as our fictional counterparts are confined.
The reality is that disabled people drink. I was asked most often in 2013 when I was a fresher: "Can you drink?" Or "Should you drink?" Although, I was also repeatedly told that I shouldn't drink and that I was too fragile on nights out as strangers made passing comments about my health and body and whether I could survive drinking a shot.
In my own 'messy' era, I became famous for my ability to drink a shot without flinching and would often return shot glasses I found in my wheelchair the murky morning after.
Some non-disabled people behave this way because they are obeying the grand narratives of disability in our culture and media. Disabled people lack privacy; non-disabled people often have an 'urge to know' about disability and feel asking intimate questions is appropriate.
The media, for generations, has given non-disabled people this power, has told them that the disabled mind and body must be policed and controlled.
Away from the glare of the media, the real disabled people I know do drink. Sometimes they take drugs. Or they don't. It's a personal choice.
Much of the disability imagery that society consumes is incorrect or stifling, particularly regarding love and sex. Unfortunately, those around us often internalise these same messages, meaning there can be lower expectations for disabled people’s sexual lives. It's revolutionary to have a character such as Debs casually say, "Never have I ever taken it up the arse."
As Dr Kirsty Liddiard from the University of Sheffield states, "representations of disabled people are finally changing to depict their multifaceted characters. Disabled people have long been shown as saints, eternally innocent and pure, or the opposite — the evil baddy scarred by their disability experience."
We are now seeing "more faithful representations of disabled people and disability on screen – the idea that disabled people, like anyone else, can be messy, criminal, reckless, or just human."
To have the messy disabled person represented on screen is progress. Finally, shows like Big Boys allow us to claim some of the power for the first time. After all, having these imperfect, everyday disabled characters in the background frays the world’s image of disabled people at the edges.
As a child, I longed to see myself reflected, but I couldn't find my body or disability represented on TV or in magazines. Disabled people weren't models or actresses. There was no disabled princess.
As I have grown older, I have realised that more also needs to be done to reflect the lives of disabled people — including the ugly, un-airbrushed, unfiltered bits. We'll only have equality when we can tell our stories on our terms, when disabled people are drawn from life, not prejudice.
Of course, disabled people can also be drug dealers. Ash (Callum Mardy), a wheelchair-using drug dealer whose wheelchair isn’t mentioned – is also progress.
When we meet Ash, he simply remarks, "need any gear, hit me up." He offers up a double-sided business card, one side for his position as a member of university staff and the other for his "Ash Tray" business.
Later, we see him down the local pub helping Danny to conduct drugs experiments – giving Jack the advice to, essentially, clench after taking drugs.
Campus dealer Ash – who just so happens to be disabled – feels like a success for the sometimes-flawed humanity of disabled people. We deserve better than simply living in the minds of non-disabled people as a 2D image of virtue, without vice.
This new representation of disability can also be seen in how Debs speaks, telling people to "f**k off", as many working-class Northern disabled women I know would. You can't "call yourself working class unless you've badly burnt the roof of your mouth on a Greggs," after all.
Disabled women in particular are taught from a young age to be pleasing, quiet and deferent – this lecture has also meant few disabled women on our screens could exclaim, "Don't get your knickers in a twist, love, I couldn't care either way."
Her final image – her face frozen on an indignant scream feels like a radical, subversive act – provocative and powerful in its messiness.
Showing that disabled people can populate the slightly grimy, messy world of nightclubs and drug-taking matters. Disabled people must occupy every space to remove the notions of what we ought to be and do. We need more honest, true-to-life, messy disabled characters to represent the world, our world, accurately.
Big Boys will air two episodes on Channel 4 each Thursday from May 26. The whole series is available to watch now on 4OD.
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