No one wants to see The Inbetweeners as adults – why must we keep rehashing old shows?

Ooh, friend!” “Frieeeend!” “Football friend!”

There was a certain period in the late 2000s when, if you happened to be a teenager in Great Britain, it felt like you couldn’t go 24 hours without hearing these words. Like the ubiquitous “Whassup?” Budweiser advert before it and the strangely permeating “Skibidi” that came long after (so popular it has now entered the Cambridge English Dictionary), this specific set of syllables, delivered in a mocking, high-pitched voice, seemed to somehow transcend its humble origins and become emblematic of an entire era.

If you’re unfamiliar, this line of dialogue originates from an episode of The Inbetweeners, the hit E4 comedy show that aired between 2008 and 2010 and has just been confirmed to return for a reboot. The coming-of-age series followed four teenage boys as they attended a mixed state secondary school in England in the Noughties, awkwardly navigating the complex social hierarchies of teenagedom (and trying to convince girls to w*** them off in the process). The show ran for three series and proved wildly popular, spawning two subsequent films, released in 2011 and 2014 respectively.

Like many a British sitcom before it, from Fawlty Towers to Peep Show, The Inbetweeners specialised in that specific brand of toe-curling cringe humour that seems to be one of our most successful exports. The exploits of the four main characters – Will McKenzie (Simon Bird), Simon Cooper (Joe Thomas), Jay Cartwright (James Buckley) and Neil Sutherland (Blake Harrison) – struck a cultural chord because they painted a fairly accurate, if exaggerated, portrait of the specific nuances and humiliations required to make it through adolescence in this country. It was the perfect foil to Skins, another E4 creation and arguably the forerunner to Euphoria, in which teens were all presented as beautiful yet permanently angst-ridden; their glossy brand of trauma, intense romantic relationships and drug-fuelled tragedies were a world away from the realities of key stage 4 as we knew it. By contrast, The Inbetweeners’ depiction of puberty as an endurance sport, marked by gross-out humour, foul language and a string of embarrassing incidents, was painfully familiar.

Characters were sick in nightclubs and house parties after overenthusiastic bouts of underage drinking; they lied about their sexual conquests, tried unsuccessfully to use fake IDs, got infected after piercing their own ears and casually joked about one of their teachers being a paedophile (and what school didn’t have a notorious incident involving a staff member and a student hooking up in those days?). There were gags about fingering, copious amounts of vomit, urine and semen and every episode ended in some kind of ritual humiliation for the main quartet. Whenever they managed, by some miracle, to get a girl, they very quickly ballsed things up.

It was completely and utterly of its time – a cultural moment preserved in amber (or, knowing The Inbetweeners, something far more disgusting). Which is why the news that the show is set to make a comeback brings me no pleasure whatsoever. More than a decade after its finale aired, creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris have confirmed that the comedy will return in some guise, after their production company, Fudge Park, signed a new partnership with Banijay UK. The contract “paves the way for the return of the hit comedy title”, apparently; while few details have been released, Beesley and Morris said in a statement: “Incredibly exciting to be plotting more adventures for our four favourite friends (ooh friends).”

I want to be supportive of British comedy, really I do. But there is not one single atom of me that wants to see those characters all grown up, nor that particular brand of toilet humour translated to adult life. I can only imagine the kind of scenarios the writers are dreaming up for us right now. Are we going to see Will mess up an important presentation at work because he has a jizz stain on his trousers? Laugh as Jay’s compulsive lying leads to catfishing dates on Tinder? Watch as Simon’s marriage unravels because he has a porn addiction? Discover that dim-witted Neil wound up being a Cabinet member? Spare us, I beg of you.

To be fair, it’s nothing new, merely the latest in a long line of examples of existing Intellectual Property being milked until the creativity teat is bone dry. Gossip Girl, Cruel Intentions, Twin Peaks, Frasier, Sex And The City – all have been rehashed in one form or another, the decomposing corpses of previously great ideas and characters given CPR and jolted back to life when they arguably should have been left to rest in peace.

The issue isn’t just that you risk forever damaging the original legacy with a botched job – I’m looking at you, And Just Like That – it’s that these grasping attempts to cash in on the nostalgia wave mean there’s less room and money for truly innovative and groundbreaking ideas to get made. And yet, when you look at this year’s properly brilliant shows, they have been, well, new: take the agenda-setting miniseries Adolescence or Sally Wainwright’s brilliant and thought-provoking Riot Women.

Much as those four silly, disgusting boys will always hold a weird place in my formerly teenage heart, I wish we could leave the past in the past. Part of growing up is surely growing out of believing that an unsatisfying reboot can ever hold a candle to the original.