The Banter Years Season 15 Episode 1: They’ve only gone and delivered a banger …

Episode One: Trouble In Paradise.

Rating: 5/5

It is difficult to do prestige TV well. You have to consistently keep the storylines interesting and exciting, and avoid them becoming samey.

If they get too similar to previous seasons, they alienate fans, and you see the numbers fall off a cliff. That has to be said upfront.

Yet the makers of The Banter Years are very, very good at what they do.

There’s only one other show on television that really comes close to matching it in terms of creative endeavour, and that’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Because it too is about a loathsome cast of characters who you want to see fail over and over again—who do fail over and over again—and whose writers keep finding new, inventive, hilarious ways to manifest that failure.

That isn’t easy. Every now and again, they have to throw a curveball. Like the Season 10 twist, when the Evil Empire actually triumphed… but even then, it wasn’t what it seemed.

They triumphed in front of empty stadiums, and the season ended with their fans rioting in George Square. A twist ending, yes, but still an experience for the viewer which delivered. Just not in the way anyone expected.

A show that is this consistently brilliant is always at risk of stumbling. But The Banter Years hasn’t yet. And as we open Season 15, the quality remains stellar. Episode One is an absolute beast. It has all the hallmarks of a proper disaster-thon in the grand tradition of previous seasons.

What’s amazing is that we usually have to wait until deep into a new run before things start to unravel—and typically a new cast member gets around a year, a full campaign and a bit—but this is not a typical season.

The showrunners made a bold move at the end of Season 14. They brought back some old cast members just for the fun of it and made them the management team at the Ibrox club. The cast and crew and the fans all knew it was temporary.

None of them would be returning for the new season.

But it’s not just those guys who didn’t return in the opening episode—because the writers also threw in new owners and a whole new plan. So, there was a lot of anticipation from the fans going into this season, wondering how it would all unravel.

The amazing thing is how swiftly the writers have turned the pressure cooker up to max.

They crammed a lot into Episode One—three matches, a boardroom coup, a new manager in the dugout—all in just the first half of the episode.

That’s a hell of a lot of backstories to stuff into an opener, but not only did they manage it, all of it clearly lays the groundwork for a season of farce, fury, and dire consequences.

They titled the episode Trouble in Paradise, which was a neat double meaning. The episode is laced with nods to goings-on at Celtic—the perennial rivals of the Ibrox club, and the people who have been ruling over them and rubbing their faces in it for most of the 14 seasons so far.

The good guys, if you will. Although not the protagonists of the show, of course. Because the genius of The Banter Years is that it follows the bad guys. The drama and the laughs come from watching them suffer. Which they do. Over and over again.

Trouble in Paradise could mean the Parkhead club; they are embroiled in a lot of controversy and chaos of their own. But it quickly becomes obvious that the title refers to the internal ructions at the hapless Ibrox operation. Players want to leave after a bad transfer bluff went wrong.

Others aren’t enamoured of the new boss. And there are going to be some fine slapstick characters developed over this season, and one of them already looks a peach.

The opening scene is stellar, and from the get-go you could tell this season was going to be different. Perhaps even the best one yet.

The new American owners are sitting down, unveiling their brand-new boss.

After a summer of teaser trailers suggesting it might be Gerrard or Ancelloti (both of whom had appeared in the pre-publicity convincing folk they were certainties)—or some other big-name from abroad who could bring flair and give the bad guys a fighting chance—they unveiled an oddball vegan Buddhist with some nutty ideas about the game.

A kind of American New Age manager, giving the show a real shot in the arm and a whole new vibe.

How will this most modern of men, with his wacky ideas and West Coast sympathies, go down with a support that expects its bosses to be egotists and tossers who treat everyone around them with contempt? It’s a dazzling opening choice from the writers.

And it shows serious guts, changing things up as the show enters its fifteenth year.

The really daring thing they’ve pulled off here is that although the club is now engulfed in this strange liberal freakshow vibe, and a wave of confidence has come with it, you can already see that the same old issues are going to surface—just like they always do.

The impatience. The arrogance. The supremacist nonsense that infects the club from top to bottom. The way everyone is expected to just get on board the bus, no matter where it’s heading.

All the old ingredients are there, in spades.

Take Max Aarons, for example, the obvious breakout star of this year who has already drawn comparisons to last season’s gem of a character, Jefte. “Like the Brazilian,” one fan complains to his mate. “But shittier.”

The new full-back has already drunk so much of the Kool Aid that he’s about one step away from joining an Orange Walk and banging a Lambeg drum.

After the second Greek game he gives a hilariously loaded interview to the press talking about how the team has the “mental fortitude to be champions” just because they eked out a win over two legs against a hapless side in the Champions League qualifiers.

It’s a beautiful bit of foreshadowing, because by the end of the episode that belief has collapsed like a souffle in a thunderstorm.

The manager is suddenly questioning the mental fortitude of the entire squad in the aftermath of their first rebuke: a 1–1 draw with Motherwell, which takes up most of the episode’s second half.

The show ends with the new manager in front of the press, delivering an almost incoherent rant as the sound of booing echoes around the stadium. The away support is furious, fed up already, and chucking scarves towards the pitch.

The final image is of the new boss, and the new owners, standing pitch-side talking about … what? His resignation? Another crazy transfer gambit?

Already though, Martin and his crazy ideas don’t look like they’re going to survive the season. And that would be really groundbreaking—because in recent years, the manager usually changes mid-season, but the new guy is already several months into the job by the time that series begins.

This time’s different because of that hilarious, brilliant decision by the showrunners to turn the last chunk of last season into the Barry Buckfast Show.

So the new man in the dug-out is a total newbie, although his backstory says he was swiftly sacked by his last club … and so you can already see exactly how it ends for him.

The booing. That’s the memorable sequence.

Scarves flying. Disgusted fans stomping off. A manager under fire, standing in front of the media. And instead of doing the usual thing—asking for patience, defending his players, trying to soothe things over—he pulls out a flamethrower and torches the whole place.

Only The Banter Years writers could come up with such an absurd ending to Episode One and have people buy it.

Which, of course, kicks off the age-old debate: is this really a scripted show at all?

Is it real life, or is it just absurdist fiction, made for TV and beamed into our homes as though from some parallel universe? This is why most of us are convinced it’s just very good satire; real life could never be this deranged, this chaotic, this surreal, this hilarious.

The start of any new season always carries uncertainty. You never know if it’ll hit or miss. But most of us figured these guys would deliver a banger.

And, amazingly, against all odds—but also perfectly in keeping with everything that’s come before—that’s exactly what they’ve done.

Bravo to them. It was great television.