The Young Offenders review: Cork’s own latter-day Laurel and Hardy return, with a few tweaks

He wasn’t kidding. As the new six-part run begins, a Trainspotting-style monologue from Jock’s best pal and fellow loveable gobshite Conor (Alex Murphy) fills us in on what’s been happening while our hapless heroes were off screen.

The Young Offenders - Season 4 trailer

Jock picked up some work for the pair of them from “a Spanish-speaking bloke he met on the internet”. All they had to do to earn some easy money was bring “some heavy coats” into Ireland from Colombia.

Cue a riotously funny scene of Jock and Conor struggling to walk through a Colombian airport clad in ridiculously oversized parka jackets stuffed with cocaine.

In a moment that recalls the original film, the lining of Jock’s coat springs a leak, leaving a trail of Colombian marching powder behind him and attracting the attention of a sniffer dog. “It’s fabric softener!” he protests as the cops drag him away.

Conor makes it as far as Cork Airport, where he’s also nicked. Jock is sentenced to eight years in a Colombian prison and Conor is banged up for six-stretch in a Cork nick. At least it’s nearer to Mayfield than Bogotá.

“Three shitty years later,” Conor is out, his early release due to some string-pulling by his former nemesis Garda sergeant Tony Healy (Dominic MacHale), who’s now married to Conor’s feisty mother Máiréad (Hilary Rose).

Conor won’t be seeing much of Jock for a while. Alas, neither will viewers. Chris Walley’s busy schedule over the last couple of years, which included roles in the horror film The Voyage of the Demeter, the BBC crime series Bloodlands and Netflix’s new Irish-set black comedy thriller Bodkin, which lands this Thursday (May 9), meant season four had to be effectively written around him.

He appears only briefly in the first episode, in the airport scene, and not at all in the following three episodes. For a comedy so heavily dependent on the Laurel and Hardy-ish vibe between Jock and Conor, having half the double act go missing for a long stretch could easily have been a disastrous blow for the series.

While there’s no doubt that the chemistry between Walley and Murphy, who click together as perfectly as Lego bricks, is missed, the series’ creator and writer Peter Foott has done a wonderful job of recalibrating the new episodes to take account of the actor’s absence.

Over the course of the previous three seasons, The Young Offenders has evolved into more of an ensemble drama. The warm, often unapologetically sentimental interplay between the various characters is as integral to the series as the chaotic comic capers of the two leads. The necessary tweaking Foott has had to do gives the rest of the cast more room to shine.

Conor emerges from the “hotel for dickheads”, as he calls it, to find the Jock-shaped hole in his life isn’t the only big change he’s going to have to adjust to.

This is a slightly different Young Offenders, but the winning formula of raucous laughs and big-hearted sentiment remains joyfully intact

Now that Máiréad and Healy are married, they’ve moved into his Healy’s house, meaning Conor has to share his new bedroom with a pile of cardboard storage boxes.

With no Jock to spark off, Conor has become friends with their former nemesis, local nutjob Billy Murphy (the excellent Shane Casey). Billy is still prone to regularly deliver numbing punches to Conor’s arm, but now it’s done with manly affection rather than malice.

Frankly, Conor is going to need all the affection he can get now that his beloved Linda (Demi Isaac Oviawe) is engaged to an old adversary: the loathsome weasel Gavin Madigan (Daniel Power), who tried to split Conor and Jock up when they were in school and is now a teacher, as well as the owner of the weediest moustache this side of James Joyce.

Meanwhile, Linda’s dad, school principal Barry (PJ Gallagher), has been turfed out by wife Orla (Orla Fitzgerald) and has become even more demented — although circumstances later make him and Conor allies.

This is a slightly different Young Offenders, but the winning formula of raucous laughs and big-hearted sentiment remains joyfully intact.