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Jack Rooke has seen at least two U.S. producers reduced to tears in the middle of meetings.
Best known for the BAFTA-winning “Big Boys” — his acclaimed semi-autobiographical sitcom that straddles both out-and-out hilarity and serious matters such a grief, loss, sexuality and mental health — the British comedian and writer has been visiting L.A. and doing the standard tour of networks and production companies that most creatives make when they hit a certain level of success.
Following the unlikely yet uplifting friendship of recently out and (very) sexually inexperienced freshman Jack (Dylan Llewellyn) and horny, straight, mature student Danny (Jon Pointing), “Big Boys” is awash in gags, jokes and one-line zingers. In the second season, Jack gets poked in the eye by a penis after looking through a hole in a toilet cubicle.
But there are plenty of heavier moments too (the penis-in-eye scene actually happens in the middle of a party to commemorate Jack’s “dead dad’s 60th”). It’s likely — hopefully — those that stirred the emotions of the watery-eyed producers Rooke has been meeting.
“They fully welled up, so I’ve been having to comfort people while also pitching them new shows,” he says, speaking from his hotel in West Hollywood.
The sobs are a good sign: people in the U.S., at least within the industry, are watching “Big Boys” (the third and final season of which landed on Hulu March 25). But in an age when British exports like “Adolescence” are a racking up tens of millions of views in a matter of weeks, Rooke’s show is enjoying a much gentler launch.
“I feel like it’s going to be a slow burn here,” says Rooke, comically adding that when a friend met with execs from Hulu comedy and mentioned “Big Boys,” he claims they had no idea what he was talking about.
“I go on Hulu and you have to type in every one of the seven letters that make up the name ‘Big Boys’ in order for it to come up! So I don’t know if we can completely call it a U.S. success yet,” he says. “But I am hearing murmurs that people are watching it and discovering it.”
While “Big Boys,” which first launched on Channel 4 in 2022, may have made Rooke a much-hyped creative on home soil — earning him fans such as Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Russell T Davies, Richard Curtis, “Derry Girls” creator Lisa McGee and even Kylie Minogue (“apparently she binged four episodes,” Rooke says) — he claims that bringing the show to America has taken him back to his more humble roots.
“I started my career at the Edinburgh Fringe in a 50-seater venue in a drippy, damp cave in the middle of the day, and everything had to start from word-of-mouth, because I was completely broke,” he says. “There was no fancy marketing campaign. I got my leaflets done for free by a local printers who put their label on them. And coming to America feels a little like that — we’re doing a word-of-mouth campaign.”
Although it isn’t quite the same.
Rooke is in L.A. not as a struggling skint artist in a moist cavern, but as a celebrated rising star in British TV, and last year’s best comedy writer at the BAFTA TV Craft awards (one of eight BAFTA TV nominations for “Big Boys”). He’s also visiting at the behest of his UTA agent Larry Salz (who was recommended to Rooke by Waller-Bridge), and he’s already notched up some U.S. celebrity fans — most notably “SNL” legend Vanessa Bayer, who he says has been “a huge influence in helping spread the word.”
Alongside getting the message out there about “Big Boys,” with the show having now come to an end (and it definitely is the end, Rooke assures), the main task is to build on its success and figure out what comes next. And that thing could well keep him in L.A.
“For my next project, I am looking to understand the U.S. market a bit more and make something a bit more globally facing,” he says. In the U.K., Rooke notes that there’s currently an emphasis in the industry on there being “too much comedy-drama,” which is exactly where “Big Boys” sits (for each emotional moment, he “always makes sure there’s a joke 20-30 seconds around the corner”).
“In America, it just feels like the genre definitions are way less defined,” he claims. “There are obviously people who work in comedy and people who work in drama, but they’re really up for mixed genre and the duality of tone. And I feel like my tone as a writer is more popular here, in a weird way, because people want more shows like ‘Big Boys’ … just not so locally specific.”
‘Big Boys’
Because while “Big Boys” does have many universal themes that chime in the U.S. (just ask the weepy execs Rooke has been comforting), it is also exceptionally British. Many of the jokes concern niche elements of local pop culture likely to sound alien to anyone outside the U.K., let alone in West Hollywood. Something more globally facing would, at the very least, have to include less references to British daytime TV presenters or obscure reality show contestants.
“That’s the fun challenge for me next — and a big part of me coming here,” says Rooke, who points towards his friend, fan and agent stablemate as an inspiration.
“I think that Phoebe [Waller-Bridge] is the best example of a British screenwriter who created something that felt very British, and then did ‘Killing Eve’ that took place all over the world and felt really big in scope,” he says.
With that in mind, Rooke says he’s now “trying to write my ‘Killing Eve.’” But he admits to also adoring “Veep,” which he asserts perfectly combines both a British voice with an American delusion. “So the next thing I write, I want it to be like my ‘Veep’ meets ‘Killing Eve.’”
This hybrid of global scope meets British comic perspective may well form the basis of the pilot Rooke is currently writing for Netflix U.K. He can’t say much about it, but says it contains “some of the hallmarks of ‘Big Boys’” while perhaps leaning more on the drama-comedy.
“Since being out here in the States, I’ve realized I loved writing jokes, but I’m a comedy writer with a love of the dramatic. I want for there to be a constant subversion of the expectation, so you think you’re going down one path and then you take everyone on a completely different one,” he says, citing early advice in his standup career from Vicky Jones, who directed the “Fleabag” stage play. “She was like, make sure your work isn’t sentimental, make sure it subverts. I think she saw that I’d use emotion in something, then try to undercut it with a dark, silly joke.”
While, amid the tears, most of the meetings in L.A. have been about Rooke pitching new ideas and hearing what networks are looking for, some of the talk has touched on the potential for a U.S. remake of “Big Boys.” It’s a concept that Rooke says he’s had “some ideas” about. Chiefly, if he “allowed it to happen,” he says it would have to contain the same central core, which is that of a “comedy about friendship and chosen family,” while keeping its personal narrative device.
“So if I could find a U.S. writer, director, creator who I felt an affinity with and who I felt understood the underpinnings of the story, I would be really up for exploring that,” he says. “But I’d have to do quite a vigorous talent search. I don’t just want to do a shit kind of karaoke tribute version of ‘Big Boys.’”
Whatever does come next for Rooke, there is a big bold step he’s considering taking. With TV comedy struggling in the U.K. as broadcaster budgets are squeezed, his trip to L.A. has inspired him to make the move more permanent.
“The response I’m getting out here is really positive and the meetings I’m taking are amazing, almost to the point where I really, genuinely, am considering moving here,” he says. “Because I do feel like the networks and the producers I’m talking to are really celebratory of the tone that I have as a writer.”
The current plan is to spend the summer in London (Rooke’s first since 2000 not spent working on a series of “Big Boys”) and return to L.A. in the fall. Ideally, word-of-mouth of his hit show would have gathered more steam by then.
“It does feel like the audience in the U.S. is growing, just not like other U.K. shows where it has an instant impact,” he says. “But I’m sort of quite excited about that — I feel like there does need to be one British show that’s like a slow burn. And each day I’ve been here, more and more Americans have messaged me, which is really nice.”
One simple goal would be for “Big Boys” to reach the lofty status of not having to be typed out in full on its U.S. platform.
“I would obviously like Hulu to know the show exists,” laughs Rooke. “Hopefully we can get them to realize that it’s a really lovely comedy show and I’m proud that there is a home for it in America. And yeah, you really do have to put in all seven letters, which is a little bit depressing.”
