Liam Williams's Ladhood captures the horror and humiliation of being a teenage boy

Adolescence is described as a rite of passage but for young men it can often feel like several drawn-out years of ritualised humiliation. No girl wants to talk to you, nightclub bouncers get a kick out of turning you away, an evening out with your friends inevitably devolves into a brutal game of one-upmanship.

That sense of late teenagehood as a time of existential torment is hilariously evoked as Liam Williams’s Ladhood returns for a second season (BBC One/Three; boxset available on iPlayer).

The formula: The Inbetweeners with an extra scoop of miserabilism. It’s funny, absurd and cruel – adolescence in a nutshell, really. It begins with a re-introduction to grown-up Liam – Williams’s semi-fictional alter-ego – as he comes to terms with a devastating break-up from girlfriend Jess (Lily Frazer) by going on a boozy date.

Liam is jolted out of his drunken self-pity when his prospective love-interest inquires as to when he had last been happy without the help of alcohol. He flashes back to the day he received his GCSE results. He’d done well – unlike sidekicks Craggy and Ralph – but on a night out to celebrate all are united in their haplessness.

From there Ladhood expands into a rumination on life in the stultifying suburbs. In a later episode, Liam recalls his early attempts at learning to drive. And there are raw, funny scenes in which his friends confront young Liam about being a freeloader and never caring about their problems – real-life flash points that seldom make it to television.

Williams is from suburban Leeds and Ladhood is rooted in the experience of growing up in a mid-sized city. It isn’t small enough to seem oppressive or give you much of anything to rebel against, but not quite big enough for it to feel you can be whoever you want to be.

The early 21st-century milieu is neatly recreated too. There are references to post-Trainspotting rave movie Human Traffic and to Neil Strauss’s hopeless (but bestselling) pick-up manual, The Game.

Young Liam’s mates quote Strauss extensively as they go out on the pull – with predictably disastrous results. Our hero, meanwhile, gets lucky simply by talking to a girl. But when she brings him back to her flat he is devastated to discover she and her pal are in a competition to see how many boys they can sleep with. The tables have turned and he is the one being objectified.

The nihilism is served neat and Williams’s unflinching droopiness would give a pre-cancelled Morrissey a run for his money. Weirdly, though, it is the present-day storyline that comes off as contrived and “sitcom-esque”. In episode one, Liam spends the night with his date only to then reveal he isn’t ready for a relationship – which makes him look like a cartoon sociopath.

It is when we follow teenage Liam and his friends, for instance on their ineptly debauched night out, that Ladhood hits the spot. Rising above the status of mere light entertainment, it delivers an almost profound meditation on the agonies of growing up.