The second full series of BBC3’s People Just Do Nothing comes to an end this week with the members of pirate radio station Kurupt FM celebrating the launch of Brentford’s leading new nightclub, the Champagne Steam Rooms. It has been a welcome return from the gang, including MC Grindah and DJ Beats, with series two seeing pirate radio’s most deluded duo muddle by while continuing their efforts to keep listening figures up in the high double digits.
Garage MC Grindah has had it particularly tough this time out, having to endure the woes of looking after his child after girlfriend Miche got a job in a beauty salon. He stepped up to the plate, though, getting Angel “Christianed” in church and picking out a suitable godfather. After trying to decide between Beats and fellow Kurupt DJ Decoy, he instead took the role on himself. “It’s about loyalty, it’s about respect, it’s about being the head of a crime family,” he tells a church full of friends, having watched a film to understand what his job will involve.
Despite its larger-than-life characters, People Just Do Nothing’s success lies in its believability. You don’t see cast members popping up in anything else (although Asim Chaudhry, aka entrepreneur and Kurupt financer Chabuddy G, was in a recent BT advert), so it feels like a hermetically sealed world that could well be real. You get the feeling that if you drove out to Brentford you might actually run in to them.
The mockumentary format is key to this, although the influence of The Office does occasionally cast an all-too-large shadow over People Just Do Nothing. At times, Grindah’s delusion in relation to his own success, talent and likeability is a mortifying dance away from full David Brent. It’s something you’d think executive producer Ash Atalla, who also worked on the genre-defining BBC2 series, would have maybe picked up on.
If Grindah is Brent, Steves is his Gareth. One of the major joys of this series has been watching the hapless and lanky DJ as he buzzes through each episode on an entirely different, pill-induced, frequency. In one episode, high off medication his grandma gave him, his unbounded energy is taken advantage of by Chabuddy G, who sets him to work printing knock-off Ralph Lauren T-shirts (“The jockey is bigger than the horse”).
To be fair, G’s previous attempts at recruitment amounted to parking outside the jobcentre and shouting “Get in my van and do as I tell you” at people, so this was probably a safer bet. It’s what his inspiration, “the Apprentice guy, Alan Shearer”, would want. Indeed, Chabuddy G’s whole vibe is that of a contestant kicked off the Apprentice in the first week, and Chaudhry gets all the best lines here.
Five episodes is a blink-and-you-miss-it run for People Just Do Nothing, and the series has perhaps lost something by focusing so many of the episodes on activities outside the radio station. Looking into the wider worlds of these characters lives has been great – I’d happily watch a whole episode of Grindah playing on the slides at the playground with Angel – but this show is at its best when it’s closest to its specialist subject. Should there be another series, let’s hope for more of that.
A third series has yet to be announced, and the status of BBC3 as it goes online-only in the new year is bound to be a factor in any commissioning decision. With its roots in YouTube webisodes, though, this is a series bound to find its iPlayer audience. In fact, the BBC should go further: the Kurupt gang’s attempts at pirate radio are woeful; imagine how bad their TV channel would be ...
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Are you locked on Kurupt’s 108.9 frequency? If not, might you be the one to take them into triple figures? Let us know in the comments below
