People Just Do Nothing, review: A sublime and rightly award-winning comedy

There's a plentiful supply of comically tragic chutzpah in the fifth and final series

“If you’ve got goals you don’t need a job. If you know where your dreams are you don’t need to live in reality.”

So true, don’t you think?

With these unwise words, MC Grindah (Allan Mustafa) sums up the entire street philosophy of Kurupt FM, the UK garage crew/pirate FM station that he leads, usually towards oblivion. In case you’ve missed this sublime and rightly award-winning comedy, it’s a mockumentary that chronicles the underclass-Britain-in-2018 lives of the members of this west London gang (not a very threatening gang, I hasten to add), and their attempts to beat the world armed only with delusions. Guess who wins?

At the conclusion of the last series some of us thought it was game up for Kurupt FM. The police raided them, confiscated their kit, and arrested DJ Steves (Steve Stamp), the most idiotic of this collection of idiots.

Now we find them a year on and trying to rebuild their lives and musical careers. Fortunately, so pathetic were their previous attempts at broadcasting piracy that the judge refused to take their crimes too seriously, so Steves tells us, because their “radius” of influence was so minute; less a serious breach of the wireless telegraphy legislation and more like “kids messing around in a bedroom”, according to the perceptive beak. Out on community service doing some gardening in a park, Steves is introduced to a “hoe”, after asking his supervisor, “how many hoes you got?”. That is what he does.

Their predicament is summed up in this exchange between his hopelessly devoted sidekick, DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin) and the mockumentary “researcher”:

Beats: “What you need to run a pirate radio station is passion for music, decks, a microphone, a transmitter and the best MC in the galaxy.”

Researcher: “How many of those have you got at the moment?”

Beats: “We’ve just got the best MC in the galaxy.”

And, a plentiful supply of comically tragic chutzpah. Grindah, who displays David Brent-like tendencies, brags that such is their cultural dominance of the Brentford manor: “A lot of people don’t even know we’re off air” – the irony naturally lost on him.

Naturally, too, they turn to their manager to raise funds to re-equip. Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry), aka the Brown Casanova, aka the Mayor of Hounslow, and ultrapaneer, has the idea that they should get down the nearest car boot sale to offload the sort of tat you can’t shift on eBay. There then follows an informal homage to Only Fools and Horses, in which a flat-capped Chabuds – “not Del Boy, Dal Boy” – attempts to bribe a council official with “a donkey” in small change. The headshots of Grindah at £80 don’t sell, and neither does the “tit milker” (as DJ Beats markets his partner’s discarded breast pump), the Kurupt FM CDs or the old headphones (two for £1).

I suppose I don’t have to labour the point that Only Fools and PJDN share some of the same timeless sources for the sharpness of their comedy – the chasm between reality and aspiration (“This time next year we’ll be millionaires” could be said as easily by Del Boy or Dal Boy); class; sexual frustration; male friendships and bonding; and petty fraud.

This is the fifth and (sadly) final series of one of the very best productions to emerge from the BBC3 comedy factory in recent years. Although a feature film, virtual reality experience, an American spinoff and some live gigs are planned, so determined are the team to end the British TV run that they’ve started to demolish the west London tower blocks that their lives revolve around (because the local council really is redeveloping the area). Poor Miche (Lily Brazier), now Grindah’s wife, is as removed from reality as any of them (except Steves), and is soon to be as removed from her current home, hair salon, family and friends as she can conceive. She has to ask the housing office: “What part of London is Essex in?”

Afraid to tell Grindah, she has no one to turn to but her mum, Carol (Victoria Alcock), now in a “womantic welationship” with Chabuds, as he might say. She offers to help by persuading a friend who works at the council to pull a few strings – “anything for my girl”.

Miche graciously refuses: “I don’t want you to shag a bin man so I can stay in Brentford, Mum.”

To which Carol can only reply: “Don’t you knock a bin man. I’ve had a few in my time and they scrub up OK, they really do.”

I’ve said it before, but BBC3 really has been a marvellous comedy incubator – and People Just Do Nothing may well be its towering achievement.