Fun boys is back for a second series, and Steve Coogan turns up as Callum’s boss Phillip. For a sitcom built around twentysomething friends from Ballymacnoose, that is the cleanest sign yet that the is leaning into the show’s odd mix of sentiment, bad behaviour and mock-serious performance.
Callum has recently started working at a living history attraction, where Phillip takes his role as a brutal land agent far too seriously. The setup gives the series a new workplace pressure point without moving away from the two creators, Rian Lennon and Ryan Dylan, who also star as Jordan and Callum.
Ballymacnoose and the second series
Last year, Funboys debuted on the, with Jordan and Callum set against Lorcan and Gemma in a town that sits somewhere between local nonsense and full comic invention. Rian Lennon plays Jordan, described as a whiny manchild, while Ryan Dylan plays Callum, the wretched loser at the centre of the pair’s orbit. Lee R James and Ele McKenzie round out the core cast as Lorcan and Gemma.
Steve Coogan’s arrival as Phillip is the major casting shift in the second series. He is not just another face in the room: he plays Callum’s boss, which puts him inside the same small-scale social ecosystem the show uses for its jokes and its uglier impulses.
Callum’s 19th century shift
Callum’s new job at a living history attraction matters because it gives the series a concrete workplace for the first time in this run. The 19th century setting lets the show push its usual comic trick harder: characters treating nonsense with total seriousness, even when the situation is visibly ridiculous.
That also fits the series’ wider style. The show plays friendship as sentimental and serious while also showing the trio performing that friendship badly for a nonexistent audience, which keeps the tone from settling into simple warm-heartedness. It is the kind of contradiction that lets a sitcom stay broad without becoming empty.
Jordan, DVDs and 4x4s
Jordan’s storyline in the second series pushes the same impulse into stranger territory. He learns about the Irish famine, decides to donate his Family Guy DVDs to Namibian children and gives away the family car, while the series also sends the group into attempts to win money in a robot-battle tournament.
Those choices keep Funboys in the lane it has already drawn for itself: absurd, specific and awkwardly sincere. Jamie Demetriou also appeared as Gemma’s deranged brother in the first series, so the show has already shown it will bring in outside names when it wants the chaos to widen.
What matters now is simple: the second series is not a reset, it is an expansion. Coogan’s Phillip gives the show a sharper authority figure, and Callum’s new job gives the story a firmer engine, even if how many episodes Coogan appears in, and how much of the second series he features in, are not stated.
