James Buckley makes adolescent boasting funny without demanding that every laugh belong to him. We rate his timing most highly in company: The Inbetweeners gives Jay room to be answered back.
Fi1m perspective
When Jay Cartwright brags in The Inbetweeners (2008), the joke need not finish when James Buckley stops speaking. A friend's response can be funnier, and he leaves room for it. We laughed at that exchange of boast and reply because Buckley makes Jay's need to impress clear without insisting on winning the scene himself. It is a useful distinction in an actor so often cast as overconfident young men. He knows how to let another performer have the laugh.
Jay was the breakthrough, carried from the series into the first film in 2011 and a second film in 2014. Playing young Del Boy in Rock & Chips (2010) offered the challenge of making a familiar character convincing as a teenager rather than simply copying the adult. Later leads included Brian Weaver in the fantasy sitcom Zapped (2016) and Brian Fitzpatrick in White Gold (2017). The latter brought him back together with Joe Thomas and the Inbetweeners creators for a 1980s sales comedy. Sales patter is a sensible use of his talent for playing overconfident men.
The work we value most is still the four-way playing in Damon Beesley and Iain Morris's The Inbetweeners. Simon Bird, Blake Harrison and Thomas give Buckley people to play against, and none of them needs to dominate every exchange. Their timing makes the boys' company enjoyable even when their conversation is not admirable. The programme's narrow view of girls is a real limitation, however. The casting earns our patience with the boys, but it cannot fix that writing.
His later screen work has been less prominent, and Jay still does much of the work of defining his reputation. We would be wary of treating familiarity with that performance as proof that he can only do one thing. Equally, the evidence for our enthusiasm is specific: the timing, the tall tales and the unforced friendship of that ensemble. Start with The Inbetweeners, provided an evening of adolescent embarrassment sounds like pleasure rather than unpaid supervision.
Biography
James Buckley is an English actor, comedian and musician. He is best known for playing Jay Cartwright in the E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners (2008–2010) and its feature films The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) and The Inbetweeners 2 (2014).
Born in Croydon in 1987, Buckley began performing in school plays and attended stage school from the age of seven. At eleven he appeared in West End productions of Whistle Down the Wind and Les Misérables. He later took small television roles in series including Teachers (2004), The Bill (2005–2008), Holby City (2006) and Skins (2007). He received nominations for the British Comedy Awards, BAFTA Television Awards and Royal Television Society Awards for his performance in The Inbetweeners.
