IF YOU LIKED Sharon Horgan's Catastrophe, you'll love 'Long Dark Twenties'.
The Irish Youtube mini-series features actors and comedians Kelly Shatter, Luke Benson and Kevin Handy.
'Long Dark Twenties' concentrates on the uphill struggles of living through your twenties, bringing us into the lives of two best friends, Lily and Ben.
The twentysomethings remain unlucky in love as they oversee their peers getting hitched or promoted, buying houses and having babies while they're stuck working unfulfilling jobs to fund forgettable weekends.
The hilarious, disastrous escapades the pair have venturing around Dublin as they attempt to make it through their twenties are more than relatable as each episode encapsulates the 'first world problems' we all encounter from day to day.
Playing the character of 'Ben' in the series, actor Luke Benson spoke to The Irish Post on how the series came to fruition:
He said he and Shatter met through improvisation classes, and then met their writing partner Kevin.
The trio then met up to write scripts: "The first meeting was January, two years ago in the Central Hotel and while we had a few different ideas, the chemistry of these two best friends seems pretty central. So we wrote a few scripts, myself and Kev are videographers so we figured we could pull something together ourselves, with our friends, on the weekends..."
The actors took the time out of their weekends to create the series: "We were relying on people's generosity and time so we filmed the first six episodes across a six month period."
Benson said the team has been pleasantly surprised with the positive response received: "We were surprised and delighted that the first series did as well as it did, we got about 100,000 views, so we wanted to do more but we really wanted to improve production values. We spent 3 months writing new scripts."
A Kickstarter greatly helped the team's extra resources for series for further development: "Then we ran a successful Kickstarter where around 150 people supported us and we raised just over €8,000. Which was incredible, the feeling of support from our community, our friends and family were overwhelming."
The success of season 1 has ensured the creation of season 2, which will be released weekly from the 7th of May.
The reception to the series, comprised of 6 episodes lasting roughly 5 minutes has been so positive that the self-made, self-edited series is hotly anticipated by fans.
Benson told The Irish Post their preview screening for the second series was shown to an eager audience in one of Dublin's most popular theatres, the Project Arts Centre and was very well-received.
I for one, cannot wait for the next series to arrive.
All episode of 'Long Dark Twenties' can be found here.
The series has gained many fans online, sharing their appreciation for the comedy using #LongDarkTwenties.
I’m genuinely a big fan of the #LongDarkTwenties web series, & I’m showing my support by pledging the absolute bare minimum to their Season 2 @Kickstarter https://t.co/NJq9U7ZI7o
— Brian Cheatle (@BrianCheatle) November 26, 2017
That Friday Feeling @Mr_LukeBenson #longdarktwenties #fridayfeeling pic.twitter.com/G2ct9xGhgM
— Ronan Johns (@ronanjohns) October 7, 2016
New web series some friends of mine made, It's really very good. More of this kind of thing please https://t.co/o6LIAZQbOT #longdarktwenties
— Mikey NOT Mickey (@MrMikeyFleming) October 6, 2016
